


Death Takes A Holiday: A Memory of Baker Street

by LyraNgalia, rude_not_ginger



Series: Death Takes A Holiday [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Action/Adventure, Angry Sex, Blood, Bondage, Cocaine, Drug Use, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Great Hiatus, Guns, Handcuffs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, John Watson's Wedding, Needles, Oral Sex, Post-Reichenbach, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Referenced John Watson/Mary Morstan, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Content, Surgery, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:12:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 43,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler return to London in an attempt to throw off Mycroft Holmes' pursuit. But London remembers, and ghosts with familiar faces are in far more danger of being recognized here than in the rest of the world. Still, there is a reason why they chose London. Sentiment, or something a little less obvious?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Foolish

**Author's Note:**

> Please see [_Death Takes A Holiday: In the Shadow of the Black Mountain_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/694742) for notes/explanations on the peculiarities of this fic's writing style.

'Foolish' had been an understatement.  
  
And if he had _said_ London, she'd have said no. But, Irene supposes, that was precisely why he hadn't until they'd made it to the airport, and by then it had been too late to refuse without giving in, and her pride wouldn't allow her that. Tension sits uneasy at the back of her neck, threatening to crawl its way up the base of her skull, as the airplane begins its descent into Heathrow. She ignores it, forces her eyes closed in feigned sleep.  
  
It doesn't work, not with the flight attendant (cheating on her boyfriend of three years with the pilot) making her rounds and the child doing its best to collapse his own lungs through screaming (his father being currently preoccupied with whatever pornography he was watching on his computer). She tries to remind herself that the discovery that her death had been a ruse had already begun with the Black Lotus, with her message into the dark, that the confirmation of it would only _help_ what she was trying to accomplish, but none of that actually helps. Irene taps her fingernails against the armrest and murmurs to her companion, her eyes still firmly closed,  
  
"I've changed my mind. This isn't brilliant. This is insanity."  
  
  
"Insanity maybe," he says. "But it _will_ be the last place they look."  
  
He looks over to the screaming child and is briefly reminded of the time they almost got booted off of the flight mid-Atlantic to Las Vegas because of his threats towards the last screaming child.  
  
"We need to pick up more poisons the next time we get to a chemist's lab," he says. "Something easily concealable in child's formula."  
  
  
That coaxes a laugh out of Irene, a bit unwilling perhaps. She is too busy trying to ignore her mind's attempts to figure out just how badly this could end. "Alcohol would work just as well," she replies. "Would've worked if that boy hadn't thrown his drink at the blue hair."  
  
  
"Yes, but it wouldn't have been nearly as effective," he says. "And there's a level of punishment that parents ignoring their screaming children should face. Speaking of which, he's going to have an alert out on him as a possible T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T when we land."  
  
  
Another laugh. This one more genuine, less frayed and tense, even though she can see the lights of London in the airplane's windows. Too late now. But she can let this work for her, she _will_. Dead or alive, she is Irene Adler, after all.  
  
"You never did say why you wanted to come back." She wonders if it is for John Watson's wedding.  
  
  
"Contacts," he says.  
  
Really, though, there is only one contact left in London that he trusts. The lights of the city are comforting in their way, but also foreboding. He fled here to knock out more of Moriarty's web, but stayed away to keep people safe.  
  
Three people.  
  
"I don't know if there's anything in London you might want to acquire, or re-acquire while we're here, as well."  
  
  
She doesn't believe it, because just days ago leaving Montenegro he had said he didn't plan on coming back until the charade was over. But she doesn't point that out, not now that it was too late. Because a part of her recognizes that London is a sore point, that London is intimacy and secrets and the past and things better left alone. And she is, for the moment, tired of the moments of intimacy and shared secrets. Being in London as the Woman is dangerous, but it is better to be the Woman in all her untouchability than to be Irene Adler with scars on her fingers and wounds on her body that whispered secrets of human fallibility.  
  
"There's nothing in London that would be useful to a dead woman, Mr. Holmes."  
  
The words are carefully neutral. She misses London, in the way that only Londoners missed the city, but that was dangerous and sentimental.  
  
  
"Then it's all for the better that we're on a holiday from all that," he says. "And, as it is, we'd have simply had a layover near here anyway. Better to land where we want on our own terms."  
  
He wanted to be _back_ already. He wanted to object to John's wedding and harass the incompetent officers at Scotland Yard. He missed---  
  
Yes, that was really it. He missed London. The familiarity of it. He knew London, he could see everything so much more clearly when he knew how everything was put together. This was different. The holiday was getting muddled.  
  
Would the Woman be as distracting back in a place where he knew everything?  
  
  
She says nothing in response to that, turning her attention to the airplane's window, and the familiar skyline of the city, its familiar lights, growing closer. The plane rattles momentarily as the landing gear deploys, and Heathrow resolves itself from the sea of lights as they near. She wonders, now that they are here, what has happened to her house in Belgravia, to the clients who had bent the knee at her feet. She wonders, and a look of melancholy crosses her face as she thinks of all the scandals that have gone undiscovered, unexploited since she'd left, whether that sweet posh thing in the Palace ever found more interesting play or simply settled into the the role written for her.  
  
Irene is tempted to call her again, but she dismisses the idea as soon as it presents itself. A holiday from death was temporary. A revelation and a resurrection would be permanent and dangerous. Her hand reaches for the mobile in her pocket, and she wonders if there is a response on her phone to her message into the dark. Whether she should simply find Moran now, here, or continue playing the game and draw him out in agitation.  
  
"And here I was starting to wonder if you just wanted to be done with this little holiday." A faint smile at that.  
  
  
He turns to look at her. The Woman is difficult to read at the best of times, but especially now he finds her to be an utter mystery. It's wonderful. Frustrating, but wonderful. He remembers his promise to himself, to work out a way to bring her back to life and still protected. The holiday may end soon, but this---he doesn't want this to end. She's too much part of his life.  
  
Oh, they would be rubbish at being together all of the time. But for a while? For a while it would be marvelous.  
  
"Are you ready for it to be over?" he asks.  
  
  
She isn't. She knows this is temporary, that this respite cannot be anything _but_ temporary, but no matter how often she reminds herself she is not ready for it to end. Because for it to end would be for Irene Adler to return to the grave, for her to hide and no longer need to be brilliant in her misbehaviour, no longer need to be spectacular in her disguises and her manipulations.  
  
But she will not tell him that. Instead, she gives him a sidelong look as the plane touches down.  
  
"Already trying to renege on the promise of taking me somewhere warm?"  
  
  
"Not remotely," he replies.  
  
The plane lands, and he looks over to the worried stewardess with a bored stare. New? No, the seams of her stockings have mild tears in them, despite how well-made they are. The color of her scarf is bright, she wouldn't wear bland nude stockings unless it's for work, so she's been here for at least long enough to wear those out. So why the nerves?  
  
The stewardess looks at him and can only assume he's staring at her legs, because she promptly crosses them and glares. She's still nervous. Interesting.  
  
"Analysis?" he asks, with a slight head nod.  
  
  
She raises an eyebrow at him, following his nod towards the flight attendant. If he were anyone else, she would have thought the question was a distraction, an attempt to pull her attention away from London and all its history and the complications it would entail. But he isn't anyone else, and Irene takes the question at face value. She considers the woman in question and murmurs,  
  
"You mean besides the fact that she's itching for a cigarette, that she'd just spent the last hour and a half shagging the copilot in the crew rest, and the fact that she's afraid that her boyfriend will notice that the other man's left bruises at her throat?" A familiar smile curves on her lips. "Or are we talking about the fact that she's pickpocketed three passengers in first class?"  
  
  
"Busy woman," Sherlock says with an agreeable nod. "But there's something else. She's not just nervous. She's worried about something here, something in London. She doesn't live here, you can tell that from her lipstick. So why the nerves? Boyfriend could be likely, but not enough for a woman as skilled at copulating with coworkers as she clearly is."  
  
The plane starts to move to park, and the man with the baby puts away his pornography, while the stewardess stands, heading back into the crew rest. Pickpocketing isn't her chosen profession, though. So why is she?  
  
  
A second flight attendant takes the nervous one's place as she makes her way towards the crew rest, and their collective motion dislodges the curtain separating business class from coach. It's enough to give Irene a glimpse of the passengers: a pair of geriatrics on their return from some cruise or holiday are the most unusual, the rest mostly business men and women. One of them with an antique brass and leather suitcase, heavily reinforced from the inside, a wear mark along the briefcase's handle that spoke of being rubbed against a handcuff.  
  
"Worried about being discovered while she's here, perhaps. If the man up front who likes handcuffing himself to his briefcase is one of the people she pickpocketed from."  
  
Corporate espionage isn't one of Irene's preferred methods, but she knows it well enough to know that look far enough upward and business and crime ended up nigh indistinguishable.  
  
  
Sherlock nods, and his attention is gone from the stewardess the moment the curtain closes.  
  
"Dull."  
  
He turns back to the Woman, glancing past her as the plane traffics to their stop. It's colder, here, and it's just started raining. Unlike in Hong Kong, though, the air will be cool and somewhat less polluted. Certainly fresher _smelling_ , he imagines.  
  
"Six months since you've last been here?" he estimates. Not guessing, never guessing.  
  
  
The passengers seem to shift restlessly as one as the plane nudges up against the jetway and the attendants begin clearing them them to leave. Irene glances out the window, where they are already beginning to unload. It's raining. Of course it's raining in London.  
  
She resists the urge to turn on the mobile as the announcement comes on that they are allowed to again. She isn't expecting a text, she shouldn't need to turn it back on. But at the question, Irene gives him a sidelong look, a smug smile playing on her lips. "Are you asking or guessing?"  
  
  
Sherlock casually flips his own mobile on. He has no reason _not_ to turn it on, and he tries to go through weather, general news on the very small screen with very bad reception. He misses his old phone. He had that down to a science, and could pull up anything he wanted in only a few seconds. This---it would have to do.  
  
"Confirming," he says, casually.  
  
  
At the answer, her smile deepens, and she pulls the window shade down. Irene doesn't bother telling him that it has been about seven months since she'd been back, that she'd fled England the very night he'd exposed her. There is no reason to hide that fact, no reason except that he hadn't known already, not for certain.  
  
The crowd begins rising, surging its way to the exits, and Irene settles back, only now turning on her phone. "I should visit the palace."  
  
  
Her lack of confirmation means he's wrong, and that annoys him. He wasn't entirely certain when she'd left, though it had been about two months since when he finally tracked down her whereabouts. He, however, had only stayed in London for two weeks following his "death", generally tormenting Molly Hooper's cat as he made plans for his next place of operation.  
  
"I doubt she's there," he says. "Time of year for royal tours, isn't it?"  
  
He isn't honestly certain, though he imagines that Mrs. Hudson would have been.  
  
"I need to head to St. Bartholomew's Hospital."


	2. Tempting Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back among the familiar streets of London, both Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler are more themselves than anywhere else in the world. But will the temptations of their lost lives prove too much to resist, or will the future and the promise of a more permanent return change the way they haunt London?

"All the more reason to go," Irene says. "I imagine palace security would tear itself apart trying to figure out where the belated wedding present came from."  
  
Her mobile shows an unread message, and she pockets it again. That could wait, at least until she was certain he wouldn't be reading over her shoulder. "The morgue attendant? Should I be jealous?"  
  
  
"She's the only person, save you, that knows I'm alive. That is, until Mycroft works it out."  
  
Though, honestly, it would be tempting to see what the reaction of the palace might be if they were to cause some sort of stir. Even something very small. He finds himself smiling as the people around them get to their feet.  
  
"Well, this _is_ a holiday. It wouldn't be right if we didn't see some of the sights."  
  
  
"That isn't an answer."  
  
She doesn't particularly _care_ about the answer. But she does like to point out that she's noticed what he'd tried to do. She returns his smile with one of her own, and there is a gleam of anticipation in her eyes. "And business before pleasure, this time."  
  
  
"Yes, of course," he says. Business, dealing with Molly Hooper, making certain things are going to be all right for when he returns. And business with John Watson's wedding. Not that---not that that is the reason he wanted to come back, of course. That certainly has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.  
  
"We can't stay for more than 72 hours," he says. "And I'll need to purchase some hair dye."  
  
  
"You've bought hair dye before."  
  
The crowd makes its way out of the plane, and Irene rises from her seat. She doesn't climb over him, simply stretches. A part of her wonders if 72 hours is a tacit warning, that he will once again disappear. She'd seen the Black Lotus' cocaine on the boat but now she wondered how much more of it he'd left Hong Kong with.  
  
"Or are you soliciting a colour choice?"  
  
  
"You have to look at me, after all," Sherlock says. He doesn't particularly care what his hair color is, but he does find it important to remind the Woman that his presence will be felt here strongly if he's discovered. The dark hair was excellent for reminding the Black Lotus who they were dealing with, but he's clearly gotten too big here in London. Even dead, someone might recognize him. The last thing he needs is even a _whisper_ that he's alive.  
  
"Though if the burn on my scalp has anything to say about it, blonde would be my last choice."  
  
  
"And here I was going to suggest blond first," she says with a smirk as she considers him.  
  
A part of her wants to make contingency plans, to determine what will be necessary to leave at a moment's notice if he disappears again, while another part of her knows she'd stay the 72 hours even if he did. It is an irritating bit of knowledge, and she ignores it pointedly.  
  
"I liked the ginger."  
  
  
"Very well," he says.  
  
It's quite simple to exit at this point, and it would be very simple to get where he needs to go in a taxi. The difficult decision comes from whether a taxi would be the best mode of transport, or some other way of getting there. Some way that doesn't involve potential witnesses to his survival.  
  
That, and he has a marked distrust for taxi drivers.  
  
"Taxi or car theft?" The words are asked as casually as possible, so as not to arouse suspicion.  
  
  
"First the hair colour and now the mode of transportation?" she murmurs. There's no need to go to the luggage carousel to borrow some traveler's bags. She knows where to find exactly what she needs in London.  
  
Besides, with him looking quite so much like his old self, Irene didn't want to linger. "You're being positively solicitous. Should I be suspicious?"  
  
Not that she is ever _not_ on her guard around him, she tells herself. But then he has gotten remarkably good at dismantling that too...  
  
  
Suspicious? Probably. His mind is simply everywhere _but_ on simple things like transport and hair color. He has so much... _else_ to worry about. About what would be a good idea, and what would be an awful idea in this city.  
  
And John Watson's wedding.  
  
Not that that was at all a factor for why he's here.  
  
He turns to her, suddenly remembering this. "We'll need formal clothing, as well."  
  
  
She had been heading for the exit, where familiar cabs waited but, at his comment, stops, forcing a frazzled looking father with a pair of redheaded twins to swerve around her. Irene doesn't notice this; she is too busy turning around to look at him, as if a sidelong glance or a brush of her hand is not enough to tell her what she wants to know.  
  
Her attention is fully on him, as if some miniscule twitch in his expression will unravel what she wants to know. "I thought the point was _not_ to attract attention."  
  
  
His expression is serious.  
  
"Exactly."  
  
  
Annoyance flits over her expression, and her eyes flick to the crowd that's flowing around them.  
  
"What exactly are you planning?"  
  
  
"Nothing you'd approve of," he says. "But then, I never do."  
  
He takes her by the arm, turning his head slightly to the left as he approaches the door. He remembers where all of the cameras are in this airport. Mycroft taught him once for a case. Now, it will be crucial in avoiding Mycroft's gaze when they move about---well, the planet.  
  
"You have your play, I'll have mine. But first, business."  
  
  
Even as he takes her arm, as her steps match his, her attention lingers on him. Something about his words tug at her, a puzzle that needs to be solved, a game to be won, but there isn't enough information for her to understand.  
  
Not yet, at least.  
  
As they approach the door, and the familiar cool wet air of London drifts in, Irene turns her attention to the crowd of taxis waiting outside for a fare. She dismisses most of the cabs, looking specifically for one whose driving habits are cautious, the sign of someone who isn't quite used to London traffic. A newcomer to the city. Someone less likely to recognize London's consulting detective.  
  
"Of course. I'll have the driver leave you at the morgue first?" she murmurs as she raises a hand to hail a particularly cautious driver.  
  
  
He looks aside to her. Leave? He'd expected quite a bit, but that wasn't part of it. As always, she is very difficult to read, but deliberate nature colors her actions, suddenly, and he sees there is _clearly_ something he's missing. But what? Something she did he missed? Something she didn't do?  
  
"Contact you don't want me to meet, then?" he says, his voice all certainty that he doesn't really feel.  
  
  
"Afraid to lose sight of me?" she counters as the cab in question edges towards the curb. The cab's slow progress earns its driver glares from a few of the more savvy, experienced drivers, but that suits Irene just fine.  
  
"My contacts in London are firmly of the belief that I'm dead. I like it that way."  
  
She doesn't, really. She'd rather be alive and herself again, but she had to assume Moriarty had known a number of them, which means Moran might know a few, and she'd rather _he_ only knew her as an unexpected text, rather than find out exactly where she was.  
  
  
"So not someone in London, then," he says with a nod. Once the cab comes to a stop, he holds the door open for her.  
  
He completely disregards the question about losing sight of her, because that _is_ an idiotic thing to think. Afraid of losing her? No, certainly not. He hadn't just lost her for three days, he hadn't been afraid for her. That would be--- _deletably_ idiotic.  
  
It didn't stop the twist in his chest, however. It was an annoying sensation.  
  
  
"Just expecting the morgue attendant would appreciate a little privacy," she answers, deliberately uninformative, the warm knit of her dress brushing against him as she climbs into the cab.  
  
As she settles into the cab and its familiar seats (just like every other cab in London), a subtle shift comes over her, and her accent switches to something exotic, English laced with rough-edged Russian.  
  
"The hospital, St Bartholomew's Hospital, please," she tells the driver as she makes room for Sherlock to climb in after her.  
  
  
Sherlock does not speak Russian as well as Mycroft, not by a long shot, but he does speak a little. He glances over to the Woman and speaks to her. His voice is heavily accented with English and would not pass as a native, but the man in the seat in front of them is not Russian, and probably only barely speaks English, like most people in this city.  
  
She implied before she doesn't speak any Russian, he remembers. So, he doesn't bother choosing his words carefully.  
  
" _I imagine she would, unless like John she's suddenly found herself a new fiance,_ " he says, his words casual, even if the words themselves are far from it.  
  
  
Her Russian is better than her German, though that in itself says more about the abysmal state of her German. Still, she understands his response, and with effort can craft a short response.  
  
Her accent is better than his, though her vocabulary is rusty. She may have done _that_ deliberately.  
  
" _Unlikely. But I'll rescue you from her doe-eyed stare before too long._ "  
  
  
His eyebrows don't raise, but his smirk slowly starts to grow at the edges of his lips. She would be the one to know this language, wouldn't she? French, Russian, a little Mandarin. She complimented him in so many ways.  
  
" _Molly is much better with her lab equipment and corpses than with living people,_ " he says. " _It's the reason she and I work so well together._ "  
  
  
She is momentarily irritated that he appears unsurprised by the fact that she answered him in kind. But that passes as the need to parse his answer (really, this was _almost_ as bad as German) takes up more of her attention.  
  
Her lips thin as she realizes she does not have the words to express what she wants, and instead she answers, " _Now maybe I should be jealous._ "  
  
She switches back to English, heavily tinged with Russian. "Any colours you're partial to for formal wear or are you still keeping why we need that a secret?"  
  
  
She switches to English, and Sherlock finds himself smirking again. She's only switching because of a reason, and that reason isn't that the man in front of them can speak Russian. He puts that knowledge away, in case he needs it later.  
  
"Something subtle," he says, his own accent terribly thick. "We're not going somewhere we want to stand out."  
  
London is his home. It always will be, no matter how far he goes. He looks out at the cars and the people, and it all clicks, it all makes sense. This almost feels like a return for recovery.  
  
  
She's given something away, judging by his smirk, and it irritates Irene to know that she has. Her fingers tap against the pocket that holds her cell phone and its single unread message, and she turns her attention to the scene rushing by. The grey sky and its rain is familiar in the same way that the cab is familiar, but she refuses to let herself miss London.  
  
To miss London was to miss the house in Belgravia, the clients and the scandals and Kate and all the rest. She reminds herself of the phone in her pocket, the unread message and the plan that had begun to take hold in those hours of feigning drugged sleep in the bowels of a yacht in Hong Kong harbour. That was the goal and London with all its familiarity and promises of comforts, wasn't where she needed to be.  
  
Not now, at least. Not until she'd gotten Moran exactly where she needed him.  
  
She can see St. Bart's in the distance, and Irene leans towards him, a smirk tugging at her lips, as she asks, "Should I trust you not to get yourself stabbed or shot before I come back?"  
  
  
"Only if you don't end up kidnapped," he says. He touches her jaw with his fingertip. As familiar and comforting as London is, the unpredictability and mysteriousness of the Woman would always draw him back in. In Russian, "Woman", if mispronounced, means "dangerous lady." How appropriate for the Woman seated next to him in this cab. The color dot on a page of gray.  
  
The cab pulls up in front of the hospital. The hospital he died on the top of, as far as the city is aware.  
  
" _I'll be in the morgue._ "  
  
  
She lets her smile be her only response to his words and the now-familiar touch of his fingertip against her jaw. She gives the cab driver another address as he climbs out, an expensive boutique in Belgravia, and only when she leaves the hospital behind does Irene give the cab driver _another_ address.  
  
To a different sort of boutique.  
  
During the ride there, Irene manages to get a room at a hotel, comfortable but not ostentatious in its luxury, and check the unread message.  
  
It is a single word, direct and to the point. Exactly what she would have expected from Sebastian Moran.  
` Bitch.`  
  
Her answer is simple. `Not a fan of being hunted down, dear? If only someone could fix that for you.`


	3. The Secret in St. Bart's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is only one person in London who knows Sherlock Holmes is still alive. But how will Molly Hooper take to the knowledge that Sherlock is not the only member of the walking dead he's brought to St. Bart's? And how will Irene Adler take to being alive again?

A different cab pulls up at St. Bart's about an hour later, and the late Irene Adler makes her way down to the morgue.  
  
  
When Sherlock arrives, he slips into the morgue unattended, passing by as people who would've recognized him don't think the man passing by could possibly be him. He avoids the CCTVs. Mycroft will learn that Molly is involved, and probably not too long from now.  
  
That's why this is business. And important business.  
  
She's unbelievably pleased to see him. After she picks up the broken mug of coffee from where she'd dropped it, startled by his presence, she is all smiles and excitement, asking him where he's been, how he's been, and where did the cuts on his face come from.  
  
He lets her clean the old cuts. They are tender, especially the one on his lip, but hardly anything to worry about. He tries to tell her that a few of them are a week old, but she doesn't care. It makes her feel better. He hopes it will soften the blow when he tells her that Mycroft will learn about what happened soon enough.  
  
"He won't hurt you," he says. "But he will come here, will want to know what happened. You can tell him. He'll work it out anyway, I don't want him to try to extort the information."  
  
"Extort?"  
  
He glosses over the details.  
  
"Have you made any friends?" she asks, biting on her bottom lip.  
  
"Friends," he repeats, looking at her as though she's just said the stupidest thing he's ever heard.  
  
  
It takes Irene practically no time at all to make it down to the morgue. Her heeled boots, new, click briskly as she heads down the hall, and her hair is loose in deep red waves down her back. She dislikes it, but it is a disguise that is quick and will fool CCTV cameras.  
  
She pushes open the door to the morgue without preamble, still in the same clothes (save the new shoes) as on the plane. She's managed to convert the rest of the stolen diamonds to less obvious cash, and carries two pairs of handcuffs, gleaming with the sheen of new leather, in her left hand.  
  
She stops as she enters, takes in the scene, and her lips twitch with a suppressed laugh. "Don't tell me you've already made the poor girl cry, Sherlock."  
  
  
Sherlock turns around to see the Woman holding leather handcuffs. He raises an eyebrow. She's kept her clothes but changed her shoes. There's something deliciously devilish in the click of her high heels, and it reminds him of the first time he saw her, nothing on _but_ high heels. She may have the disguise of her red hair, but to him she looks more herself in the high heels than she had before.  
  
"Sherlock?" Molly says, looking at him.  
  
"It's all right, Molly," he says. He stands, gesturing in the direction of the Woman. "Molly Hooper, Irene Adler."  
  
Her expression changes. "Oh! Oh, isn't she the one---?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
  
She _feels_ more like herself in high heels, and Irene expects he'll have some smug deduction about that, when they leave the morgue. A prospect that is unlikely to be soon at the moment, if the way Molly Hooper's expression was any indication. The girl (shy, repressed, still harbouring the embers of a very large crush, and with enough skill with a scalpel to be interesting) is opening and closing her mouth in a way that reminds Irene of a goldfish, but she turns to Molly anyway with a smile.  
  
"Miss Hooper, you were the attending when they brought in the body for him to identify, weren't you? Quite a thorough autopsy report, accurate too. Thank you for that."  
  
Molly's mouth opened again. Closed. Stared from Irene to Sherlock and back again. "Y-Yes but how- wha-?" And at that moment seemed to notice exactly what was in Irene's hand and went bright red.  
  
Irene raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. "'Yes' what, exactly? Now I'm curious."  
  
  
"I'm not entirely certain what use you think those will be in a morgue," Sherlock says, ignoring Molly's awkwardness. "Beating the dead does very little to arouse them."  
  
He turns back to Molly. "She replaced herself with a client, I believe. Though Kate might've been an adequate replacement, I didn't have quite so good a look at her."  
  
  
"That depends on your definition of the dead," she answers, her smile deepening and a glint of wicked laughter in her eyes. Molly looked about ready to die of mortification, at that.  
  
She knows he's fishing for an answer to whose body it had been on the slab and pointedly said nothing to confirm it, instead leaning casually against one of the lab tables. "Not like I could pull that trick again."  
  
  
"No, it wasn't quite so easy," Sherlock says. He nods to Molly. "So, Molly, the one thing you can't mention to Mycroft is the Woman. He won't press, he's certain she's dead. Best to leave him to that certainty."  
  
He hands her a small envelope. "And run what you can on this. Text me the results."  
  
Molly's embarrassment is obvious, though Sherlock is oblivious as to why, exactly. Possibly because she's incapable of withstanding a conversation about sexuality for more than five seconds? Sherlock has never understood embarrassment over sex, it's not something he prefers to discuss, but it certainly wouldn't make him blush so scarlet.  
  
  
The particularly vivid shade of red Molly is turning gives Irene a very good idea of just how active an imagination she has, and Irene remains deeply amused as the handcuffs dangle from her fingers, swaying and hitting the lab table every so often. Molly's eye follows them, though once in a while she looks up at the two of them, and back down.  
  
Irene reads the question in her expression, and doesn't answer it. She does, however, raise an eyebrow at the envelope Sherlock passes Molly. "So it is business before pleasure. I was starting to wonder."  
  
  
Molly's questioning expression is replaced with another, more awkward expression. Of course, he can't properly tell her that the Woman and he are---well, he isn't entirely certain what they are, at any rate. The truth would hurt Molly, and even though her affections aren't his responsibility, he doesn't want to hurt her. Because even if Moriarty and even Molly didn't think she counted, she _did_.  
  
"Naturally," he responds evenly to the Woman, taking a step away from Molly and towards her. "And you, picking up---provisions?"  
  
  
Irene laughs at the question. "A hotel room, and I'd consider these a gift rather than provisions."  
  
Molly's expression wavers again, her lips forming words she doesn't actually say. 'Business.' It was obvious to Irene what Molly thought was happening, what was between them, and despite the knowledge, Molly kept her hand on the envelope she'd been handed, though her fingers seemed to worry at the edge.  
  
"S-sure all the usual stuff. Don't suppose you need the x-rays..."  
  
  
"Not as much," Sherlock says. "We'll need---"  
  
He hears the ring from the lift down the hall, and he gestures for the Woman to follow him. He knows that sound, it means someone is being brought down to Molly right now. Two porters, hefty from the sound of their footsteps, coming down the hallway at a leisurely pace.  
  
"We'll be in your office," he says to Molly.  
  
  
"Sure, I'll just be--" Molly Hooper might not have either Sherlock or Irene's skills at observation or discernment, but even she was not blind to some of the subtle shifts in body language. In the way Irene's attention turned in the same direction as Sherlock's a half-second after he turns towards the sound of the bell. In the way his gesture appears natural, as if it has been made time and again. She smiles, the expression forced, wavering, as she looks from one to the other, then to the office. "I'll just run those tests."  
  
Irene doesn't bother asking what it is, she hears the porters' heavy footfalls soon enough, and moves towards the office with him. A glance back at Molly before she closes the door to the office, not completely, but enough to keep them from view.  
  
"You told her who I was." She might as well have said it was raining outside.  
  
  
"She'd have worked it out," he says. "Better to simply tell her rather than have her describe you. If she uses that name with Mycroft, he'll assume I've said it to throw him off track. If I'd avoided a name, he'd have made assumptions. Mycroft is clever, but sometimes he's just _lazy_. And it's easier to assume that I've brought some other person here and given her your name than I've kept you alive somehow."  
  
He looks back around Molly's office. She's changed a few things since he was last here. A few new stuffed animals, a few new pictures of friends on her bright-pink photo board, a photo of a man, tall with a wide smile. He steps away from the door and over there, where a photo has caught his eye. He picks it off of the board. It's John Watson with a woman Sherlock has never seen before. He's smiling widely and has an arm around her petite shoulders.  
  
An emotion hits him like a rock in the chest.  
  
  
She doesn't move from where she stands, a few feet away from the half-closed door, leaning against a file cabinet. She can hear Molly shuffling about in the morgue as the porters come in, the doors swinging. Molly's office is utterly unsurprising, even down to the stuffed animals and the bright pink photo board.  
  
Irene doesn't ask what he's looking at. There are very few things that could catch his attention quite that quickly in the collection of photographs, and she can guess which of those few things it was. She simply watches, and waits.  
  
  
The woman that John is attached to in the picture is utterly uninteresting. Grew up estranged from her father, some sort of schoolteacher now, didn't wash her hair every evening---dull, boring, predictable. Is that what John would want? It wasn't that he wanted John to wait, to be unhappy while Sherlock was gone. He just---he imagined him frozen. Frozen in time, until Sherlock got back.  
  
His hands decidedly do not shake as he put the photograph back up on the board and turns back to the Woman. He glances out the crack of the door as the porters hand Molly their paperwork and begin shuffling outwards.  
  
"I've always trusted Molly," he adds to his earlier words. "She's never let me down, and she's always been there for me. You can trust her, too."  
  
  
Her attention flickers towards the photo board as he replaces the picture. The woman with John Watson is inoffensively attractive, long-suffering, and (at least from a glance in a photograph) unadventurous. But that in itself doesn't interest her. She's more interested in the effect the photo has on him.  
  
It's a perfectly self-involved concern, of course. They are in London, a venerable minefield of risk, and Irene cannot risk him seeking drugs and leading some idiotic assassin back to her again. So she tells herself as she studies him.  
  
"It's obvious why _you_ can," she answers, her words carefully light in response. She stays exactly where she is, doesn't move towards him. That sort of gesture was more fitted to someone who cared, who comforted. Not her. "I'd rather not when I don't have that assurance."  
  
  
"She's not vindictive," he says. "Look at her photoboard. It's new, bought within the last six months, but she still replaced the note she got from dear old Jim on it. Hardly sentiment, he left her heartbroken and used her. But she doesn't want to tell herself that she's bitter or angry, so she holds onto it."  
  
He looks away from where Molly stands and back to the Woman. "She won't hurt you because she wants to be a better person than that."  
  
  
A noncommittal shrug. She doesn't disagree with him. She doesn't bother. His answer makes it all the more obvious to Irene why she won't trust Molly. Irene Adler breathed intrigue and manipulation, she saw and exploited weakness, measured trustworthiness in ability and how much leverage she had on a person, not in _hope_ and lofty optimism.  
  
Irene moves from where she'd stood, running a finger along one of Molly's stuffed animals. "What was in the envelope?"  
  
  
"Something I needed analyzed," he says with the same noncommittal attitude she just game him in her shrug. One of the porters has stopped at the door and is trying to flirt with Molly. She's not receptive at all, but the man's smell is probably the primary reason why. All the same, she _is_ flattered, her body language tells him that.  
  
Why won't she just make him go away so they don't have to be trapped in here?  
  
He looks back to the Woman. "I'd have thought you'd know by now."  
  
  
The handcuffs in her hand swing as she makes a slow circuit of Molly's office. Aside from the stuffed animals, she touches nothing, nothing that prints could be left on.  
  
A small, wry smile plays at her lips. "I've been a little busy trying to figure out how you plan on not being recognized at John Watson's wedding."  
  
  
He doesn't start at her obvious knowledge, he simply turns back to the crack in the doorway, looking out. He collects his voice, making it as emotionless as he can.  
  
"Dyed hair, a female companion, an excellent alibi," he says. "Also, staying closer to the back. I may even add facial hair. Something to throw anyone looking off."  
  
  
She wonders when she'd begun to notice his tell. The almost imperceptible pause while he collects himself, draining whatever emotion he pretends not to feel from his voice. She wonders if he realizes it's there.  
  
Irene approaches, ostensibly to check on what can be seen through the crack in the office door, but it gives her a better look at him, at the way he's holding himself, tension taut, as if to keep himself from reacting. In her heels, the top of her head are a few inches over his shoulder as she brushes against him.  
  
She nods towards the door. "She'll notice you're there."  
  
That was, of course, if Molly know where to look.  
  
  
"Not if my disguise is good enough," he says. Molly could be his test, he thinks. If she recognizes him, then it won't be worth being there. Not that he could really leave, mind. Not if he'd gotten that far, not if---  
  
His gaze changes, somewhat guilty. Admitting himself. He hadn't told her about John's wedding, about his intention, but she would know, wouldn't she?  
  
"You don't have to go."  
  
  
She gives him a sidelong look, takes in the way his expression shifts, in the way guilt colours his features. Irene doesn't consider when she'd figured out his plan. It'd been a suspicion ever since they'd arrived at the airport, she thinks. And still she'd come with him.  
  
She missed London, yes, and he was better at avoiding attention here than she was. But a part of her had known, had at least suspected. But she'd agreed anyway.  
  
The mobile in her pocket vibrates, silently signalling a new text, and Irene reminds herself that she has a plan.  
  
"How much success have you had convincing me to do something I didn't want to?"  
  
  
Sherlock regards her lips, and how he's rather enjoyed kissing her in the time they've been together. He enjoys---all of this. It's exciting, different, and yet altogether familiar. And no, he can't convince her to do something he wants if she doesn't, because she isn't John Watson, with a smile on her face and the need for adventure and companionship in her heart.  
  
The door outside swings closed and Molly goes over to the corpse she's been brought. Sherlock's attention moves away from the Woman's mouth and he finds himself opening the door to Molly's office the moment the sheet is moved from the corpse.  
  
"Hello again," he says, looking down at the nervous airline stewardess, dark bruises on her throat.


	4. Cross Purposes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A familiar body in the morgue of St. Bart's threatens to draw the ghost of Sherlock Holmes back to London's streets, and a photograph in Irene Adler's possession threatens to throw their plans into disarray.

Molly looks up as Sherlock emerges, her eyes drifting almost unconsciously to the door of her office. She chews on her lower lip when Irene emerges and Irene considers what exactly Molly thought might have happened in the office. A knowing smile tugs at her lips and upon meeting her eye Molly blushes, again.  
  
The flight attendant on the slab solicits less reaction from Irene, and she simply looks the woman over. "They already suspect the copilot."  
  
  
"The killer was a woman," he says. "Shorter than her. You can tell from the bruising pattern, it came from below her hight, and here---" he gestures to the upper part of the throat, "---where a longer nail cut into the skin. A man with nails that long would be far too obvious."  
  
Holiday or not, when in London Sherlock Holmes becomes himself without much of a delay, too.  
  
  
He's absorbed in the clues left on the dead flight attendant's body, and it is as if a veneer falls away from him. It only becomes apparent now to Irene how unlike himself he had been with the dead minister in Montenegro, the officer on the yacht in Hong Kong. The edge of bloodthirstiness, the brittle viciousness.  
  
Another reminder that this holiday was temporary. That a plan was slowly forming and she had things that needed accomplishing.  
  
A melancholic look ghosts over Irene's face for a moment before she realizes Molly is still watching her, the other woman's hand still worrying at the edge of the envelope Sherlock had given her.  
  
"Are you not asking because you think you know or because you're afraid of the answer?" she asks Molly casually. She could have been commenting on the weather.  
  
Molly looks startled, and while her answer is unconvincing to Irene's ears, her stuttering is. "What? I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
Irene nods towards Sherlock. "Whether we're together."  
  
"Well, I won-- I mean, it's not like it ma--" Molly seems to get even more flustered. "It isn't my business."  
  
There's been a few moments without Sherlock explaining things, and Irene looks over at the slab where the consulting detective is in his element. "Are you going to tell me it was the sister?"  
  
  
"No, she's been dead for years," Sherlock replies. "You saw the photograph. Shiny and new, but the quality was old. Reprinted, then. Probably about ten years old. The two of them simply aged well. No, this, this was something else. Something planned."  
  
He gestures to the body, and then points at the file in Molly's hand.  
  
"No name. No identification on her."  
  
  
His mention of a plan brings to mind the new message that had come in on her phone, and her hand drifts over the pocket where it rests before she forces her hand back down to her side. And with that came the thought that she should change the password again, for whenever he would try to dig through it.  
  
"And no consulting detective to find either," she points out.  
  
  
She's right, and he turns away from the body back to the Woman.  
  
"No, there isn't."  
  
No consulting detective to seek out why this woman was murdered, who she was, what she was doing. Sherlock isn't John, he doesn't care about justice or her family. He cares about the fact that she was murdered and he doesn't immediately know why. The puzzle hasn't been solved.  
  
"Molly, text me the results of that analysis. Particularly long-term effects." He starts towards the door.  
  
  
He heads for the door, and Irene takes the moment to slip the phone out of her pocket and check the message that had come. It's more than a single word this time. An image downloads: the interior of a taxi, and a young girl and her brother, the boy's head in her lap, the girl wide-eyed and clutching something in her hand. The girl they'd sent to Mycroft Holmes in Hong Kong.  
  
`Like how you fixed things for her?`  
  
Her fingers tighten on the phone, and Irene slides it back into her pocket. Her brow furrows momentarily, and she forces her expression smooth again. Molly nods, and says something Irene doesn't bother listening to as she heads for the door.  
  
There's still tension in the lines of her body, as she tries to work through Moran's game, but she tries to keep her voice light, unencumbered. "You're being agreeable again."  
  
  
His mind is on the corpse, on her movements. He wants to go back and have another look at her, but he can't. He can't be the detective here. He has to stay hidden. It's for the safety of his friends. The only friends he has in the world.  
  
He notices the Woman's tension, but assumes it must be from the location, from his sudden departure from the morgue.  
  
"Am I?"  
  
  
Her mind is working through how he'd intercepted the girl and her brother. Hong Kong still, clearly. If they had made it to the airport, Irene was certain Mycroft Holmes' name would have been enough that they'd been watched. The sting of hurt pride, of being thwarted by _Moran_ of all people, irritates Irene, but she spares very little thought for whether the girl herself is still alive.  
  
The thing she realizes is that it meant Mycroft Holmes was still likely unaware that his brother was alive. And (secondarily) was probably still in London.  
  
 _That_ made their current position more delicate than she'd initially thought.  
  
But she says nothing about it. To give up that knowledge was to give up the fact that she was in contact with Moriarty's rabid pit bull. And that was a connection she needed to keep him unaware of.  
  
"What was in the envelope?" He was being agreeable enough that it was worth asking.  
  
  
Agreeable, yes, but he was still hardly a pushover. Especially when it meant revealing...sentiment. Within the envelope was the dart that had been in the Woman's spine. He wanted to make certain she was going to recover without incident. Absolutely certain. Admitting this would mean admitting that he cared. It was obvious by this point, but he wouldn't simply admit it. It is not how he is.  
  
"The real question is," he says, ignoring hers, "Why such a brutal killing? Obviously planned, her body was left without identification, but the murder was impassioned. Strangling."  
  
  
They are both too damaged, too extraordinary, to care conventionally. Too much themselves to give up vulnerability freely. So when he evades, she smiles, and a touch of smugness creeps into her voice.  
  
"You say that as if the murderer couldn't be both impassioned and calculating within hours."  
  
  
"So what made the change?" Sherlock says. "There's always a catalyst in every reaction."  
  
  
Their footsteps echo through the hospital's mostly empty hall. "I'm surprised you don't already have the answer. You've gotten quite proficient at it yourself."  
  
  
"Proficient at it?" he says, looking at her with his eyebrows knitted together. "There's nothing I've _become_ proficient with since---"  
  
Unless she means something regarding sexuality, but that idea only elicits a roll of the eyes. "If you're trying to imply something regarding a relationship between herself and the killer...?"  
  
  
She watches the expressions play across his face: the initial confusion as his brow knitted, the moment he thinks he understands, the roll of his eyes as he dismisses it, the skepticism in his tone and the subtle stress on the word 'relationship'.  
  
A smile tugs at her lips as they head out of the hospital. "I don't always mean sex, you do realize," she answers, sounding deeply amused. "Simply that there is, well, was an emotional connection. One that at least one party would not admit."  
  
  
His mind makes him want to snap back at her that he has no emotional connections. That is not who he is, that is not what he does. But by being so defensive, he'll be admitting that she's right---he's emotional enough as it is. And he does care about her, albeit in a very different way to how he cares about John and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson.  
  
"And how do you deduce that?" he asks, honestly curious. He sees the crime of passion, but the motive is lost on him.  
  
  
The rain has lifted somewhat, turning to a light, irritating drizzle, the sort that clings like a stubborn mist to hair and skin and clothing without being well and truly drenching. She shrugs and steps away from him, heading down the street, towards the inconspicuous little hotel she'd picked out during her trip.  
  
She could point out that he does it, oscillating between intimacy and detachment, but she doesn't. She knows the process intimately, but to say so would be to let him know about Kate, about how she'd lied to him in Kotor. The lying doesn't bother her, but the admission of what had really happened to her assistant. Well, that was personal.  
  
Irene shrugs simply, and leads on towards the hotel, giving him a sidelong look. "I observed."  
  
  
He stops under an awning to light a cigarette. He's running low, and to stop anywhere in London for a pack would be impossible. They all know him by sight, and even with a different hair color, he'll be putting himself at a serious risk.  
  
"Clearly," he says. "But more than I? What could you have seen that I didn't notice?"  
  
The mist is annoying. It leaves little wet buttons on the shaft of his cigarette. Never matter, he'll get what he can.  
  
  
The rain clings like a veil of mist to her hair, and Irene pushes a lock out of her face irritably. She'd pull it back but had at some point lost the tie. "You sound surprised," she answers, still evading the question. "Forgotten the opera house already?"  
  
  
"Hardly possible," he says.  
  
She's so different, now. The long hair wet and loose. Standing hidden in London with him. Deducing with him. Part of him thinks he should never have given Mycroft her phone all those months ago. He should've let her win, should've let her be the dominatrix who brought a nation to its knees. Better her to remain unchanging, like a perfect porcelain statue than to have her change.  
  
But, then again. There is some good in the change. Because as she changes, as she adapts, he sees more of her. Uncovering layer after layer. It's fascinating.  
  
"Tell me," he says.  
  
  
She doesn't want to tell him. To tell him would include clues about what had happened to Kate. Would again reveal more of herself, expose more of her _sentiment_ to him, when she had already revealed too much. But to not tell him would reveal as much.  
  
A wry smile tugs at her mouth. Neatly boxed in. Almost.  
  
"Say please."  
  
  
The look he gives her is just shy of utterly offended.  
  
"No."  
  
  
The wry smile becomes pleased. His pride remained her way out of that question.  
  
"Fine."  
  
  
There is no way to win this conversation. If he argues it, she'll dig her reasonably high heels in even further. If he doesn't, then he won't know. And he refuses to say 'please'.  
  
He'll hold onto it. Either he'll work it out, or she'll tell him. Soon enough.  
  
He straightens the collar to his coat. "The wedding is tomorrow. We'll have enough time to run that errand you wanted to, or go break into Mycroft's office and acquire a few contacts' names before he gets back to London."  
  
  
She forces herself to keep her hand at her side, not to reach for the phone and its telltale message again. She cannot tell him what she's learned about Mycroft Holmes. Not right now, or he'd wonder at the source of her information. She needed a more deniable source to use. Which meant dissuading him from heading to the elder Holmes' office by other means.  
  
"I had formalwear sent to the hotel," she answers. Irene runs her thumb over the smooth supple leather of the handcuffs in her hand. "And it'd be a shame to not leave these in the palace, unless you're suddenly curious."  
  
  
He imagines her comment is meant to make him awkward, so he naturally attempts to counter it with as calm and neutral a response as possible.  
  
"I doubt they'd accessorize with your current clothing as well as those high heels," he says. "Because I never wear handcuffs unless they're thrust upon me."  
  
This is not an area of verbal sparring where he is particularly proficient. Still, he attempts.  
  
  
She eyes him, a smile tugging at her lips and an amused gleam in her eyes. The fact that he responds at all rather than changing the subject is telling in and of itself.  
  
Irene tucks a lock of damp red hair behind her ear. "That sounds like an invitation."  
  
  
"Does it?" His voice is purposefully innocent.  
  
  
There are other pedestrians on the street, and Irene glances at them as they walk past. London is dangerous. Too full of ears and eyes and while it is a challenge she is more careful here than anywhere else they had crossed in the world.  
  
So instead of responding she reaches for her phone.  
  
` Are you being coy, Mr. Holmes?`  
  
She has, in fact, reprogrammed his ringtone.  
  
  
A familiar sigh appears at his pocket, and he raises an eyebrow. The sigh has a different context now, he knows a bit more about where that sound is made in relation to...other things. If nothing else, it makes the text noise feel _naughtier._  
  
` Not even remotely.`  
  
He almost puts his standard "SH" at the end of his text, but there's no point to it, not when she's standing right there. Not when it would be too easy to fall into that habit, and the wrong piece of information with those initials attached could undo everything.  
  
At least Mycroft will know he's alive, soon. They won't have to worry about sharing names through technology after that.  



	5. The Leap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Sherlock Holmes convinced that his brother is well on his way to Hong Kong, and Irene Adler firmly in possession of the knowledge that the elder Holmes is still in London, the foundation on which the two ghosts have build their temporary holiday begins to crumble...

She meets his raised eyebrow with a challenging smile, as if she knows exactly what that noise must now remind him of. "Pity," she murmurs, turning left at the next road and up the steps to an establishment declaring itself The Fox and Anchor. At first glance it seemed to be nothing more than a pub, though a second glance would reveal the presence of a few rentable rooms.  
  
"It could have made the next plane ride so much more entertaining."  
  
  
"Oh, could it?"  
  
Sherlock keeps his head down as they walk inside. He's been here before, investigating. People look him over, as he hopes they will. Couldn't possibly be Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes is dead. And if someone thinks he looks like himself, well---they won't think that for very long. He won't be around for all that long.  
  
He lets her lead the way to the rooms, deducing who is behind each of the already occupied ones by the scuff marks on the floor. He misses London. Its familiarity, its predictability.  
  
  
"It's that or the chemist's shop."  
  
It is immediately obvious which room is theirs, by the pair of hanging bags containing formalwear hanging at the doorknob. The door itself proclaims the room the Smithfield, a well appointed if cramped space. Despite the grey day, light still streamed in from the rear facing windows.  
  
Irene fishes the key out of her pocket, and the gesture manages to make the unfamiliar phone fall out as well, clattering to the ground. She reaches for it, perhaps a shade more quickly than she needed to.  
  
  
Sherlock doesn't so much as bat an eye at the speed in which she grabs her phone. If anything, his reaction is purposefully neutral. Practiced.  
  
"I'd go for the chemist's shop. As far as I remember, there is only one in all of San Salvador."  
  
Inside of the room, he sees there is a large bathtub at the foot of a large bed. He's not tired, but he knows that they will need to sleep before they get to Nassau, as rest is going to be more than a little difficult once they get there.  
  
  
The phone is returned safely to her pocket, along with the key, and Irene tosses the hanging bags on the low, wide bed. It doesn't matter that she'd tried to find a room with both a couch and a bed, or even two beds. It isn't something she'd tell him, after all.  
  
She slips into the small bathroom with its walk-in shower and finds a pen with which to pull up her damp hair. "Why San Salvador?"  
  
  
"My contact is there," he says. "Used to live in America, but he's been there for a number of years. Should be able to give me the names I need."  
  
He shrugs off his coat, letting it fall over the edge of the bathtub. He knows that once they reach the tropics, he'll want for a warm bath and cleanliness. He'll have to take advantage while he's here. He sits on the edge of the bed and steeples his fingers to his chin.  
  
There is a list in his mind, and it's as intricate as the list of Jim Moriarty's web. It is tentatively labeled "The Woman's contacts". There is someone she is communicating with that she doesn't want him to know about. He simply has to work out who. Kate is at the top of his list, though he's also got others in mind. Mycroft is also on the list, though he can only hope that isn't correct.  
  
  
"I'd be more inclined to believe that explanation if we weren't standing in the middle of London." Her answer is distracted as she remains in the washroom and checks her phone again, changing the password. A random collection of numbers.  
  
`1895`  
  
The number springs to mind, and Irene turns it around in her mind. It is immediately obvious to her that it isn't something that concerns her. She suspects it's something that she'd read off a bus or a flight number on a recent trip. And she uses it. Because that was random enough and if she stayed in much longer no doubt he'd get suspicious.  
  
"I'm fairly certain that isn't where the honeymoon is."  
  
  
"It isn't," he says, only half-listening.  
  
Not Mycroft, wouldn't be. But perhaps it has to do with Mycroft. He carefully goes back over conversations, over looks she'd given, spaces of time where a response should've been obvious. He has no idea. He needs more data, obviously. Bricks can't be made without clay.  
  
He clasps his hands and stands up.  
  
"Hungry?"  
  
  
The phone goes back into her pocket and Irene steps out of the washroom as he asks. She raises an eyebrow in response.  
  
"What if I say no?"  
  
  
His eyebrows knit together again.  
  
"You don't eat." His tone holds the word 'obviously' very heavily implied to it. "However, since I've got to plan getting into Mycroft's office, I'll have to remember where the cameras are so we can avoid them, that might take some time in my mind palace and---"  
  
He looks over her shoulder at the handcuffs on the bathroom counter. He gives a nod.  
  
"I'll need one of those."  
  
  
She shrugs and takes a seat on the edge of the long bathtub, staring out the window. Her back is deliberately to him, and she sounds carefully distracted. There is no reason for her to tell him this, she knows. Because if Mycroft Holmes finds him, she knows Sherlock will still keep her secret.  
  
But that would most certainly spell the end of this little holiday. A holiday that should end, she reminds herself. "What makes you so certain he isn't in his office?"  
  
But she says it anyway, to prolong the inevitable a little longer.  
  
  
He stops at the edge of the counter, hand on the handcuff.  
  
The list changes in his mind and he turns to her.  
  
"He wouldn't have ignored that message," he says. "Not unless someone told him not to go."  
  
  
She remains firmly interested in the view outside. "You're assuming he got the message."


	6. Conclusions and Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The secret of Sherlock's death remains kept and Mycroft Holmes remains in the dark, but the existence of Sebastian Moran now looms large between Sherlock and Irene. Is this new knowledge a boon or a betrayal, or something inbetween?

He straightens and remains standing where he is. To approach her would be to approach a barrier that he feels is quickly forming there, right in the middle of the room, like a wall of ice. Playfulness about the handcuffs is gone. Desire for dinner is gone.  
  
"Which means you know he didn't. Presumably whoever you've been communicating with. Not him, your reaction would be far different and he'd probably be outside of this door."  
  
  
It is as if a freezing wind has swept through the room. She can practically feel it at her back. But something he says catches her attention.  
  
"Why on _earth_ would you think I was in contact with Mycroft Holmes?"  
  
She sounds offended. Is offended.  
  
  
"If you were listening, you would know I _don't_. But you're in contact with someone who knows about the message," he says, his voice sharp. He is also offended, but mostly because she would think he would deduce so _wrongly_. Never matter that only a few minutes ago Mycroft was still on the list. He isn't now, and now is when he's talking deductions.  
  
  
She refuses to sound defensive. Because she has nothing to be defensive about. He'd _expected_ her to have contacts, after all.  
  
"I have good reason to believe the girl never made it to the airport," she corrects. Her own voice is sharp, snippy, almost. "You've been asking about my contacts the entire trip here, don't be surprised when I have them."  
  
That was definitely defensive.  
  
  
"Then your contact in Hong Kong could've saved you," he says with a snap. "Not me."  
  
He narrows his eyes and goes over everything. The capture, the way they were holding her. Everything.  
  
"Who were they waiting for?" he says, suddenly. "Because it was obvious they were. But Jim Moriarty is dead. So---who? The person who would come and save you, maybe? Is that why you wanted to burn the boat rather than have me set it to a trap? Not have your _allies_ killed?"  
  
His voice is cold, deductive. Impassive. He has learned that when in times of great emotional stress---say, the betrayal of someone he cares for---he is best when he simply pushes everything away.  
  
  
She flinches at his words before she can catch herself. The knowledge that she _doesn't_ have any other allies is a sore spot and to have him throw it back at her is galling.  
  
Irene turns and rises to her feet. The room is too small, and to get to the door she will have to move around him. She _could_ , she doubts in his state he'd keep her from leaving. It might even make her feel better, to physically shove him away. But between the necessity of it and her knowledge of her own helplessness, she feels cornered anyway.  
  
"What _allies_?" she shot back. "You and your brother did an incredibly thorough job ensuring I would have absolutely nowhere to turn. And nothing to buy help with."  
  
  
"No, you played the wrong game with the wrong people and _lost_. You have only yourself to blame." Strange, that only a short time ago he was thinking of blaming himself for that. What a silly thing to have thought.  
  
"But if they're not your allies, then how could you have _possibly_ known if the girl made it to the airport or not? Only someone involved in this would've recognized Mycroft's name. And if it isn't him, then it has to be someone else. Someone within the Black Lotus."  
  
  
She hadn't eaten on the flight to London, and between that and the argument, Irene practically trembles with anger. She snatches up the purse that she'd tossed on the bed and heads for the door.  
  
That was easier than telling him about Moran, about trying to leash Moriarty's rabid pit-bull, already terrified into a corner by Sherlock's methodical dismantling of his former employer's network. Easier than telling him she was trying to force Moran into an uneasy truce to keep Moran from haphazardly sending assassins after them.  
  
"I'm certain you'd prefer believing your own deductions than anything I have to say," she retorts. She doesn't quite manage to match his coldness as she makes to push around him, ignoring the key to the room. "I'll leave you to it."  
  
  
He steps aside as she tries to go past him.  
  
"Where are you going?" he demands before he realizes he's not supposed to care.  
  
  
She stops, almost stumbles, in her heels at the question. She never stumbles. Irene catches her hand on the doorknob and straightens again, her shoulders squaring.  
  
"To Sydney," she retorts. "I don't have allies there to sell your secrets to either, so you can stop deducing _that_ as well."  
  
  
"I won't save you this time," he says. "We're _even_ , Woman."  
  
He felt guilt over her potential death in Karachi. He felt fear over her life in Hong Kong. But here, now, he has nothing to feel over her. She's done. She might as well be dead for all he should care.  
  
And yet, her hand on the door holds a finality he doesn't want to feel. She will be gone. Gone. Forever gone. Completely gone. If he lets her leave now, they're finished.  
  
  
"Fine. Give Sebastian my regards when the two of you try to kill each other," she replies. And as soon as the words are out, Irene wishes she had kept them back. But he does this to her, makes her angry, makes her say and do things she knows are unsafe and dangerous but that are brilliant and reminds her of what it means to be incredibly alive.  
  
  
"Sebastian."  
  
Sherlock's mind immediately goes through the files he's been through, the contacts he's made. Sebastian Smith. Sebastian Moran. Sebastian Kendricks. Linked through Moriarty's web, though Sherlock wasn't entirely certain how. Not yet.  
  
"Didn't want you to be part of the web, then?" Sherlock says.  
  
  
"Still not tired of being wrong?" she retorts. Her hand has not moved from the door knob, but she hasn't gone any further, either.  
  
"And like you said, we're even."  
  
  
"I told you I would get your life reset," he says. "Once it's over, I'd have Mycroft _fix_ it, but you don't want that. You don't want the Holmes boys to sort your life out again."  
  
She hasn't left, but that doesn't matter. He'll make her leave, the way he makes everyone leave: Through the truth.  
  
"They're murderers, and cruel. Clearly Sebastian let you know he was going to hurt or kill the children---so you've known but you haven't told me. Because you feel guilty? No. Because you want to be part of it."  
  
  
"When exactly should I have told you?" she demanded. "While the girl at the morgue was trying to swallow her tongue? That was when _I_ found out."  
  
She conveniently ignores the fact that she hadn't planned on telling him at all, in fact. Except his preoccupation with getting into Mycroft Holmes' office had pushed her to it.  
  
"So do spare me your hurt feelings that I've been plotting against you for however long you thought."  
  
For the moment, she is too angry to notice what he'd said, to realize what his plan had been, the plan she'd bluffed into pretending to understand back in Las Vegas.  
  
  
"At least you're not insulting my intelligence," he says. "I know you're not simply keeping your phone for private texts. If you haven't got any other contacts----"  
  
No. No, there isn't any reason to be this emotional. Although his voice is completely emotionless, he's irritated by how angry he's getting, how he wants to be attached to her, attached to this.  
  
  
"I only insult your intelligence when it's obvious you're not using it." Which, as far as she was concerned, he was _perilously_ close to doing.  
  
She's still standing here, she realizes, her hand on the door. She should have left earlier, left his question unanswered, left under the fury of righteous anger. Left before she'd realized she'd been caught in his orbit again.  
  
But she can already feel it happening, as curiosity and fascination draw her back in. "What did you mean, that you would get my life reset?"  
  
  
"You know exactly what I mean, Woman," he says. He grips his hand tight, focusing on remaining calm.  
  
He takes a few steps into her orbit again, letting himself stand close to her, pushing her up against the door, putting one hand on her shoulder and the other down to her wrist.  
  
  
She tries to keep calm. She stands firm despite the fact that he's backing her against the door and the fact that his hand at her shoulder means he can feel her tremble with adrenaline and anger.  
  
She doesn't care what he sees in her eyes, if he's looking for pupil dilation or counting heartbeats. She simply meets his eye, her shoulders squared and her back ramrod straight despite the fact that he is close and her body's chemistry is betraying her.  
  
"Tell me."


	7. Infinite Complexity (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anger and betrayal hang between Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes, but will the heat of anger and the bitter bite of betrayal be enough to overcome all the ways they have tied themselves to each other? Will sentiment betray them again, or will Irene make good on her threat to leave for Sydney?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for staying with us for so long! We hope the next few chapters are worth the wait, and our relentless teasing.

He traces his fingertip across her wrist, testing for warmth, and then not even hiding his test for her pulse. Arguing, fighting, ready to walk out on each other, and he still wants to know. Still feels his own heart rate go up at being close. Blood pumping faster through his body, arousal shooting down his spine. It's all betrayal, in its way. His body betraying him this time.  
  
"Is that an order?"  
  
  
The feel of his fingertip against the thin skin of her wrist, tracing along the traitorous pulse point, is familiar by now, and she doesn't bother pulling away or turning her wrist. After all, he already knows the answer he's looking for.  
  
This dance is far too familiar, by now.  
  
She swallows, and she knows her voice will be low, throaty, before she even says a word.  
  
"Would you answer if it were?"  
  
  
He wants to fight this. He is angry, the part of him that he's suppressing is absolutely angry with her. She's been lying to him, she's been holding things back, but then so has he. They're always circling each other's orbits, like two sp orbitals, causing instability as they're within each other's space.  
  
He doesn't respond to her, he pushes a kiss to her mouth. Harsh, desperate. Full of the anger he doesn't want to express.  
  
  
She knows that he feels _something_ beneath the emotionless voice; she'd learned to recognize that in Las Vegas. But she doesn't know, isn't certain, just what he is hiding and or how much until he presses that kiss to her lips.  
  
There was nothing of the artifice of Hong Kong in the kiss, or the uncomfortable intimacy of Las Vegas, or even the simmering tension of Kotor. This is harsh and full of desperate anger, and it is like a dam breaking, a crack for the flood of her own anger to pour through.  
  
She kisses him back roughly, tasting the lingering bitterness of whatever antibiotic ointment he (or more likely Molly Hooper) had applied to the cut on his lip. The reminder doesn't make her ease back, knowing that the injury is still tender, if anything it makes her press harder, scraping her teeth across his lip. Because she is angry and frustrated, because she needs to fling back the unexpected hurt of his words and his unreasonable anger back at him.  
  
Because causing pain is what she does.  
  
  
He finds himself making a low noise in the back of his throat at the pain of her bite against his lip. It hurts, but it's good. She specialized in "recreational scolding", and perhaps right now what he wants is to be scolded. Or perhaps he wants to scold. Whatever he wants, it isn't the same desperate connectivity of their last coupling in Las Vegas.  
  
He grips her hips and pulls them closer, pushing himself against her. Perhaps, if he could somehow peel away her layers as she peeled away his, they could find two pieces that could fuse together and work without the push and pull of membrane potential and their natural electronegativity pushing them apart and pulling them together in waves.  
  
  
His response, low in his throat, settles like a goad under her skin, fuels the anger that she had been keeping (poorly) in check. It doesn't matter that she had been in contact with Moran, that she'd done everything in her power to keep _that_ a secret. Because he knew, had expected it of her. But to throw it back at her, to turn it around like some personal betrayal, that had been unexpected and beneath the righteous anger it hurt and the flood of anger wanted to turn it back on him.  
  
Even as his hands tighten on her hips and she feels him pressing up against her, pulling her towards him, Irene is pushing back against him, her lips demanding as she deepens the kiss. Her hands run along his arms, fingers raking over bruises she knows are there through his clothes.  
  
  
He feels her fingertips pressing into his bruises, spreading shocks of pain down his spine, hitting him like little stabs of arousal. It's strange, very strange, and there's no one to ask about it, nowhere to properly seek out information about the newness of all of...well, this. He certainly won't ask her. He doesn't want to be taught by her right now. He wants to win the battle, he wants to defeat her, defeat the hold she's put on him.  
  
One of his hands he raises up, and he curls his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. He pulls back, pulling her mouth from his and exposing her throat to him. He presses his swollen lips against her throat, against her jugular. Small kisses and small bites down to her collarbone as he holds her in place.  
  
  
As far as pain goes, his hand in her hair is nothing. But it isn't just about the pain. It is about being _caught_ and exposed, and she snarls at him as he presses his lips, swollen and heated, against her throat.  
  
Her hands continue moving up his arms until they are at his shoulders and she can dig her nails in. There is too much cloth in the way for it to be effective but she does it all the same, the promise and anticipation of the bite of sharp nails and pain. She pushes against him, even as she tries to arch away, to dislodge the hand tangled in her hair.  
  
All she manages to dislodge is the pen that had been holding her hair in its loose messy knot.  
  
  
Her hair falls, and he strengthens his grip in her hair. He hates this and he wants this. Hates it because of how it slows him, how it controls him. He couldn't simply go to his next destination, because the Woman was in Hong Kong, and he can't simply move to the next place he needs to go, because he doesn't want the Woman to leave for Sydney. She dominates him in this way. She controls his every desire, and he hates that.  
  
He wants it because when she pushes against him, it feels like electricity. He finds his voice letting out a moan at the bite of her nails through his clothes and he hates that, too.  
  
Love is a dangerous disadvantage.  
  
He releases the grip on her hair and hip and raises them up to her wrists, that he takes in a tight hold, trying to push them back against the door.  
  
"I don't love you," he says, his voice low and breathy. "I won't demean what we have with that."  
  
  
His grip tightens in her hair and her own tighten on his shoulders, and she can feel his moan skitter across the skin of her bared throat, the sensation sending a jolt of liquid desire and molten anger down her spine. But almost as soon as she realizes it, his hands are on her wrists, trying to pull them back, to pin them towards the door, and she refuses, instead stepping even further into his space, letting proximity and reduced leverage be her advantage over his greater height and reach.  
  
He's said the same words in Las Vegas. _I don't love you._ As if by repetition he were making it true. But then he had never needed to convince her that it wasn't love. They were too much themselves, too extraordinary, too unlike the rest of the world for something as simple and banal and trivial as love. Intellect and fascination and chemistry and infatuation and connected, perhaps, but never just love.  
  
"I've never called it love," she reminds him, her voice low and steady despite her own breathlessness. She steps forward again, her hands still on his shoulders, as if to physically force him back into the room and away from the door. "You did."  
  
  
She pushes with her steps, and while he doesn't release her wrists, he finds himself moving backwards with her, closer to the bed in the tiny room. He thinks of the handcuffs, of cuffing her into place on the bed and then---and then---  
  
"I said what it isn't," he says. "You're the one with my name on your heart."  
  
The phone, still tucked away in Baker Street. John Watson once said that the Woman was the closest to love as Sherlock was capable, that he should just stop being an idiot about it and admit that. Sherlock, then still sore from the first time she'd faked her own death, was more irritated than anything at the accusation. Love is simple. They are not. He prefers them this way.  
  
  
He moves with her, and it is the tiniest triumph despite the fact that his hands are still on her wrists like a pair of vises. The thinnest, faintest twitch of a smile played at the corner of her mouth as she takes another step forward, her body pressed and molded against his.  
  
She tries to move one hand, to reach for the back of his head and pull her to him. "I told you, that cameraphone was my life," she corrects him, her voice still low and heated.  
  
She refuses to admit he may be right, even now. Or maybe especially now. Or, maybe, because there was no difference, which one he'd held in his hand.  
  
  
"And I was the passcode to it," he says. "What does that mean, Woman?"  
  
She molds against him, and he leans down to press his mouth to hers again. To pull her into him, to pull out the things that make her brilliant and have them forever.  
  
  
"You know exactly what that means."  
  
He leans down and in the moment before his mouth meets hers again, Irene manages to slide her hand into his hair, her fingers tangling in the dyed curls and her nails at the nape of his neck. She kisses him back with all the haughty pride that refuses to acknowledge with words exactly how intertwined they had become, with all the refusal to let him win, because she knows he's won too much as it is.  
  
She kisses him, and then pulls away, tightening her grip in his hair to bare his throat to her, just as he'd done moments earlier.  
  
  
As her hand fists in his hair, he takes in a sharp breath through his nose at the pain of her pull on his hair, and he finds himself releasing her wrists and going slack, like a cat that's just had the scruff of its neck held. He lets her pull his head back. Baring his throat to the wolf, in fact.  
  
"Just as you know what I meant about your life back."  
  
  
She does. And she refuses to acknowledge it, because she has her own plans, her own game to play, and as tempting as it would be to settle back into her old life in Belgravia, there were things that wouldn't be the same, and the daily acknowledgment that she was back by the sufferance and chivalry of the Holmes boys. She'd prefer to misbehave, and her plans were far more conducive to that than his.  
  
That thought, and the way his grip relaxes at her wrists, makes Irene smile, sharp and sinful and wicked, as she presses a lingering kiss to his throat, her lips tracing along the line of his collar, her teeth catching lightly and deliberately at the skin over his rapid pulse.  
  
She lingers there, alternating between the sharp cautionary sensation of teeth and soft sucking lips at the pulse point in his throat, feeling the heartbeat beneath her touch and marking him.  
  
  
He tries to hold in another moan, but his breath is far too hitched, his arousal far too obvious. This is vicious, what she's doing to him, and apparently he doesn't care as much as he thought he might. She's sucking and biting hard enough to leave a bruise on his neck, and that also doesn't really matter. Not really. They're both injured and sore in a variety of places from the last few weeks, what's one more bruise?  
  
He doesn't love her, he reminds himself. The connection he feels with her is strictly admiration for her mind, and the attraction is simply hormones and chemistry. But, then again, what exactly is love supposed to be? Besides _massively idiotic_ , that is.  
  
He feels the back of his legs hit the bed, but he doesn't let himself fall backwards. Instead, he turns, twisting them around so that her back is to the bed and he can have the upper hand.  
  
  
She wants more than to draw low moans out of him, she realizes as the world spins around them. She wants a way to prove to him that his attempts to pretend not to care are fruitless, that despite it all she has yet to actually leave for Australia. That they have become caught up in each other in ways that rendered protests that what they have isn't as simple as love meaningless.  
  
Irene feels the back of her legs hit something solid, realizes that he's pinned her between himself and the edge of the bed. It nearly unbalances her, and she tightens her grip in his hair, her other hand clutching at his arm to keep from falling back.  
  
She leaves another lingering, bruising bite along his collarbone, realizing as she does what she really wants, with anger and adrenaline and the intensity of everything they do to each other coursing through her veins.  
  
She wants him to beg, not just in the arch of his body against hers, or in the pull of his hand on her hips. She slides the hand that had been clutching at his arm upward, pushing cloth upward so she can draw her nails against his skin, raking them along bruises and faded but not yet healed wounds. She wants to make him beg for her, to beg for mercy and release.  
  
Twice.  
  
  
He lets out another gasp at the sharp bite, as well as the dig of her nails against his bruises. If there's one thing the Woman knows, it's how to _hurt_ , and she's hurt him so very well over their time together. This sort of biting sexuality actually feels rather fitting. He wonders if he can do the same to her. What line should they cross, how far would be _too far_?  
  
Her clothes have become problematic. There are too many of them and there's not enough skin for him to find. He goes about removing the unwanted materials from her, ignoring any popping of buttons or tearing. It should simply not have been in the way to begin with.  
  
  
Her lips curve into a sharp smile against his skin at the gasp she draws from him, and the almost frantic way he is trying to pull away the knit dress she wears. She leaves him to it for a moment, neither assisting nor resisting, until she hears, feels, the fabric rip.  
  
She swallows back a laugh, at that, and her hand tangled in his hair tugs him back as she pulls away from him, the hand that had been raking its slow way up his arm, baring skin and leaving behind the marks of her passage, slides down to his wrist and clasps it tight, to pull his grip from her clothes.  
  
There's very little space for Irene to move in this position, but she uses what she has, and there is steel and razor wire in her voice, commanding despite the fact that she is breathing heavy, despite the fact that her lips are bruised and swollen from harsh kisses.  
  
"I don't think so."  
  
  
That way she speaks, it reminds him of when they were back at her flat, and she'd told him to give her the phone. Then, he'd resisted until she'd hit him into submission. In a way, he'd like to do that now, just to see what her limits are. What his limits are.  
  
"Would you prefer to lead?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at the grip on his wrists.  
  
  
She arches an eyebrow back, and takes a deliberate step forward, towards him and away from the bed, to see if he would follow by backing away or keep her unbalanced between his body and the low edge of the bed. She knows, and knows that _he_ knows, that he's stronger, that if he really wanted to he could break out of her grip, but she pulls his hand from her side anyway.  
  
Her eyes are dilated as she steps towards him, and she knows it and doesn't care. "Don't I always?"  
  
They both do.  
  
  
It's like a dance. She moves forward, he moves back with her, giving her the space to control him if necessary. But there's a challenge in her words. She always takes control. Perhaps it is time he took some of his own.  
  
But those eyes. Her eyes convey so much more than her words ever could. She can lie as easily and thoroughly as he can, but her eyes will always give her away. That darkness there, the way they dilate so perfectly and are cool and black with only a ring of color around them.  
  
"I refuse to call you 'Mistress'," he teases.  
  
  
That makes her laugh, low and throaty, her breath warm against his skin as she takes another step towards him. The wall of the cramped room is once again within arm's reach, the doorway to the bathroom on her right, and she can see the leather handcuffs still sitting on the bathroom counter.  
  
She lets go of his wrist, her fingers running up his chest and undoing his shirt, fingernails no longer brilliantly lacquered red but still knowing, still sharp as claws. The laughter seems to take a long time to fade from her voice, from the space between them.  
  
"You refuse _now_ ," she corrects.  
  
  
He wants to tell her he'll always refuse, that he'll never give in, never want her to control him. But then he remembers back in Las Vegas, back when he was coming down from his high, and he thought he might want her to scold him. Scold him, show him what _discipline_ was really about. It was a fleeting sensation, but it was there, nonetheless.  
  
And he wonders right now what she would do in order to make him give in. To truly, completely break him.  
  
There would be no one he'd rather have try.  
  
"What would you have me do?"  
  
  
She doesn't try to pull the shirt off his shoulders, doesn't bother as she runs the pad of her thumb along the line of a few fading bruises on his torso, a light touch, notable for being the only part of her still in contact with him as she takes a step to the right away from him, the illusion of contact brought on by radiant body heat broken.  
  
"If I told you, you'd try your hardest to keep from giving me what I want, now wouldn't you?" she asks. Another step and she'd break even the contact of her thumb against his skin. "And that'd be playing fair."  
  
  
He is surprised by how easily he falls into a simple, almost submissive stage. Well, submissive for him. Standing where she places him, like she's hung him in that part of the room and he's not to move. He wants to touch her, he wants to release this strong, angry tension between them. But he also is desperate to know. To see what could be.  
  
"You never do play fair, do you?" he replies, and while there's a touch of malice to his words, he has no intention of starting an argument with them.  
  
  
"Never."  
  
There is no argument to start for one simple reason: it's true.  
  
She takes that step, breaks the contact, and lets her hand fall back to her side as she makes her way into the bathroom. There is a tear in the side of her dress, a few inches long, but she seems unaware of it. Instead, Irene reaches for the two pairs of leather handcuffs on the bathroom counter.  
  
They are solid, well made, obviously, of deep brown leather with brass coloured rivets and buckle. Hand stitched, with heavy waxed thread. The interiors are lined with thick fine fur. Rabbit, possibly, or fox, judging by the almost russet hue they have in the light. She dangles them off one finger as she returns and rests a free hand on his chest to keep a precise distance between them.  
  
She holds up the cuffs to his eye level. "Your deductions?"  
  
  
"Are we quite at the point in our relationship where one would need that?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "I had always assumed I would be the one to put you in handcuffs."  
  
Though the idea confuses him in many ways. The concept of restraint is obvious, and heavily apparent on her website when he'd browsed it many, many times. But it doesn't make sense to him in many ways. The amount of trust required. And right now, somehow in the middle of their argument, they've reached a point where they're requiring trust from each other.  
  
"Doesn't that take away from the promise of one staying still on command?"  
  
  
"You had your chance to put me in handcuffs, and you didn't," she reminds him. The situation had been different, in most ways, but enough had been the same.  
  
She lowers the hand holding the handcuffs, and arches an eyebrow at him, all challenge. "I could tell you or perform an experiment."  
  
  
Oh, now, this is interesting. He finds himself smirking, though it's probably neither the time nor the place for that.  
  
"All right. Experiment."


	8. Bruises and Needles (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will pain and blood be enough to mend the trust between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler? Or was there trust to begin with at all, when they have done nothing but keep secrets from each other?

He smirks, and Irene cannot help but think just what a pleasure it would be to thoroughly wipe that smirk from his lips. She takes a step towards the bed and tosses one of the pairs of handcuffs to the bedside table. With her free hand, she takes his, her thumb running a light circle along the inside of his wrist before she opens the cuff and fits it against his wrist.  
  
She purposely does not draw it tight, not yet, so that all that can be felt is thick fur and leather, rather than the pins embedded within.  
  
"Good answer."  
  
  
With his uncuffed hand, he reaches out and takes her wrist suddenly, tightly.  
  
"Don't leave."  
  
  
She wonders, briefly, if he means the hotel room or for Australia. The fact that she doesn't pull away from his tight grip, that instead she leans in and presses a maddeningly light, fleeting kiss to his lips, said more than her response.  
  
"And here I thought coming back in an hour to see if you were still standing sounded like an excellent beginning to the experiment."  
  
  
"It seems the sort of thing you would do," Sherlock says, finding himself smirking again. She would, wouldn't she? And he wouldn't be able to wait for more than a few minutes before becoming antsy.  
  
He releases her wrist and offers his to her.  
  
  
With her clients, there had been questions. Long lists of agreements before she'd even allow them to schedule an appointment. Trust in contracts and ink and signatures. But she doesn't ask with him. After all, haven't they trusted each other since he first slipped a hotel address inside a twenty euro note to her in Montenegro?  
  
She ignores how this is trust on a different level; how trusting him with her secret and her with his is utterly different from trusting each other in play and experimentation.  
  
Irene's lips curve into an anticipatory smile when he offers her his unbound wrist. She takes it, feeling his warmth beneath her fingers, and brings both his hands behind his back, to fasten the cuffs there. Her arms are practically around his waist, and her body molds against him as she attaches the second cuff.  
  
"I'd tie you to the bed first."  
  
  
He leans forward, inhaling the scent of her hair. There are subtle nuances to it that he hasn't quite caught yet. Something new each time she is close to him. He doubts he'll ever completely unravel her mystery.  
  
As the second cuff is put around his wrist, he notices something strange about the fur lining. Plusher than he'd expect, almost as if it were fluffed. And the way she held the straps, not bothering to indulge in the fur against her fingertips. Interesting. But then the scent of her hair is near him again and her body is pressed against him and he can't care any longer.  
  
"Oh?"  
  
  
" _If_ I were to leave, you'd be far too comfortable tied to a promise not to move," she answers, having no doubt he could hear the subtle stress on the 'if'. She'd made no explicit promises not to, despite his asking, but she doesn't have to.  
  
She can feel him leaning into her, and Irene resists the urge to indulge, to breathe deep of the growing familiar scent of him touched with the acrid bite of cigarettes, to run her palm along the flat plane of his torso and tracing the path of nerves along his musculature. She resists, but the thought is terribly distracting.  
  
Fitting, she supposed. So was he.  
  
She steps back, her hand lingering along his side until it rests on the front of his belt. She arches an eyebrow at him, her lips still curved in that same sharp anticipatory smile. "I'd say guess what comes next, but then you never guess, do you?"  
  
Except she knows he does.  
  
  
"Never."  
  
When he does guess, he always makes it an educated guess. Not always, but generally. It doesn't matter, mind, he's almost always right.  
  
Her smile could cut into him more thoroughly than the robber in Montenegro's knife. Her hand on his belt makes his arousal shoot up his spine, making every nerve more sensitive. He thinks about what he could concentrate on in order to stay focused, to not lose his edge when she controls him like this.  
  
Of course, he's presently handcuffed of his own volition. He's already lost his edge. He doesn't find it that upsetting.  
  
  
She moves deliberately, her fingers slowly undoing the metal buckle of his belt, sliding the length of pliable leather out of his trouser belt loops. All of it as if to point out that he could stop her at any moment, except that she knows he wouldn't.  
  
Irene runs the length of the belt through her fingers slowly before taking a step back and holds it double, snapping the looped leather against his side, striking bared skin and cloth both.  
  
She wonders if he'll flinch against the interior of those cuffs.  
  
  
He realizes she's going to strike him half a second before she does. She strikes, and he involuntarily jerks in response, the sharp sting of the leather surprising and the dull pain of the looped belt hitting setting his arousal again. Strange, the emotional response coupled with the familiarity of intimacy creating this---this sort of opposing pleasure. Once he jerks, he discovers the secret behind the handcuffs---sharp spikes underneath the plush fur of the handcuff, and as he jerks, it bites into his wrist. This causes another jerk of surprise, and it digs in again.  
  
Sharp, stinging, unrelenting, and yet utterly binding.  
  
"You choose your tools well, Woman."  
  
  
Her smile deepens, her expression clearly pleased, at his response. She reaches for him, soft feminine fingers running over the line the belt strike had taken, alternating the sharp blow with a light gentle touch.  
  
With her clients, this sort of confusion would not be necessary, would have just prolonged the game. But this was more than simple play. She wants to confuse him, to distract him from predicting what she would do next.  
  
She steps into his space again, the hand not holding the belt running down his arm. "Mm, but you still seemed surprised," she practically purrs against his ear, all warm femininity and soft curves pressed against him.  
  
As her hand grabs his wrist, pressing the cuff's pins into skin again.  
  
  
He takes in a sharp breath as the pins break skin, sharp against his wrists. He could just take the pain, he could simply revel in the Woman abusing him in such a fascinating way. But that wouldn't be _him_ , he wouldn't simply _take it._  
  
She grips his wrist, he leans forward to nip at her jawline, to take some control back, despite his bound hands.  
  
Speaking is relatively out of the question considering his shortness of breath and arousal. He wouldn't be able to trust his voice not to squeak. At least a little bit.  
  
  
She gasps in surprise at the feel of his teeth against her jawline, and Irene is once again reminded that he isn't one of her clients, that this isn't the simple scenes they indulged. None of her clients would have dared to push back, to try and take control.  
  
And that reminder, along with nip along her throat, sends a jolt of liquid desire down Irene's spine, makes her breath hitch, ever so slightly.  
  
She lets go of his wrist, her hand moving to rest on his chest, to push him (or herself) away. It's more difficult than it should be, because this is the game they play with each other all over again, the press of wills and the fight for control, and to pull away is to gain control as much as to admit defeat, to strike a blow while acknowledging distraction.  
  
But she does pull away, eyes dilated breathing heavy and no doubt flushing with blood rushing beneath the her skin. And as she does, she strikes him again, keeping count.  
  
  
He lets out another sharp breath at the strike. A bright red mark will form, he thinks, and if she strikes again, it will probably bruise. he doesn't mind that so much. She's already marked him once this evening. He falls backwards, landing down on the bed, on his cuffed hands. He makes another sound, this one sharp and in pain at the stabbing on his wrists, but he promptly gets back to his feet.  
  
Her eyes are dilated, black pools in the dim light of the hotel room. He finds himself speaking before he can properly trust his voice.  
  
"I'd love to take your pulse right now."  
  
  
Her eyes might give away just how much this is affecting her as it is affecting him, but her lips are relentless in that cold, sickle-sharp smile. He gets back to his feet and her free hand reaches for him, tugs at the waistband of his trousers to steady him.  
  
She laughs, low and throaty and exhilarated, as she draws the leather belt against his skin again, slow and deliberate. "I'd let you," she answers, her fingers beginning to unzip him. "The moment you can figure out exactly how many pins are in each of those cuffs."  
  
  
"Twenty-eight," he replies without hesitation. "The left has twenty-seven, since one broke off into my wrist."  
  
There's no pain quite like the pain of having a mind that won't shut off.  
  
  
She doesn't stop what she's doing at his answer, not until she's unzipped his trousers and eased them over his hips. She keeps in mind that there'll be the need to fish that pin out of him, but that can be done later.  
  
Irene steps close to him again, her body molding against his. It's becoming familiar, almost _correct_ , how that feels. She doesn't reach for the cuffs to undo him, instead looking up at him with an anticipatory smile. "Go ahead. I didn't say I'd take them off, now did I?"  
  
  
Her body pressed against his, and he thinks about where would be the best place to take her pulse. The wrist, of course, or the throat. There are more blood vessels in the upper thigh, but he's trying to remain in control, and having his mouth so close to her sex might make control go out the window.  
  
He settles on the jugular, and leans his mouth down, pressing lips and tongue to her skin, aware of the pulse racing just beneath.  
  
How did such an angry beginning turn into something so meticulous? So...controlled and deliberate and yet vicious? He doesn't think he cares. He can feel her pulse. Elevated. Much like his own.  
  
  
A low appreciative moan slips from between Irene's lips at the touch of his mouth against the rapid pulse point in her throat, and her body arches involuntarily against his before she realizes it and takes a minute step back.  
  
Her free hand runs along his side, over his boxers and his hip, until she can trace the old, wicked looking scar on his thigh.  
  
No doubt he'll figure out exactly where the next blow of the belt will fall. If she can pull herself away long enough to land it.  
  
  
She wants to hit him, but she doesn't want to pull away. How interesting. He wants to run away, but he doesn't want to move. Quite the conundrum they've placed themselves in. Needing to fight or flee, but unable to move.  
  
She's his drug. He wants to give her up, but she pulls him back in, like the craving for an old addiction.  
  
It's everything in him to remind himself that he doesn't love her.  
  
"Strike," he instructs.  
  
  
Irritation flits across her expression at his instruction, and Irene steps back, enough to break contact, to draw back into herself despite the knowledge that this is utterly intoxicating. This game that they play, this circling and endless push between them, has worked its way far under her skin.  
  
She lets the leather belt linger against his thigh before stepping back again, far enough to swing hard, to land a blow with precision and pain. "Is that what you want?"  
  
  
She knows what he wants. She must. There's no denying his own pulse racing, or the wideness of his pupils, or his rather exposed arousal straining against his pants, now that she's removed his trousers.  
  
She must know, but he's not going to call her on that. Instead, he finds his lips twisting into a small smirk.  
  
"Guess."  
  
  
He is infuriating. No doubt he would say the same of her.  
  
He is goading her with that smirk and his words and she _knows_ it, knows that he is playing her, trying to make her lose control.  
  
And it is the most fun she's had in ages.  
  
Her eyes narrow, and her lips thin. She swings, three times, with sharp precision, the crack of leather whiplike. First the scar on his thigh, the second blow mirrored on his other leg, the third against the still-healing scar from the IV in his chest.  
  
"It isn't a guess."  
  
  
He holds in a cry when she strikes both of his thighs, but he can't when she strikes his chest. It's sharp and painful, and the sound he makes is embarrassingly close to a moan.  
  
He falls back onto the bed again, and lifts one of his legs to attempt to wrap it around her, to pull her towards him. To fight her. To fight and to lose, because this is the sort of game he'd enjoy losing.


	9. The Road to Victory (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between blood stained sheets and the marks left behind by a leather belt, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes find themselves trusting each other in small ways, and trying to break each other in others.

His legs are far too long for his own good.  
  
He catches her behind the knee, and the sudden loss of equilibrium, coupled with his momentum, brings Irene stumbling against him as he falls onto the bed. She can feel the length of him hard against her leg beneath the boxers, and momentarily the thought occurs to Irene to leave the game, to simply _stop_ and take him, to lance the simmering, growing desire pooling in the pit of her stomach like they had in the opera house in Kotor.  
  
But his cry is still lingering in her ears and she wants to make him beg, to hear him moan through the pain, and she rakes her fingernails against his chest, following the same path the blow had taken.  
  
  
Their weight against his bound hands wouldn't mean much, but for the biting spikes digging into him, no doubt staining the lovely sheets with his blood. He can't care, though. She's warm and there and scratching, scraping her long nails against his skin.  
  
"Woman," he breathes, and the word _please_ dies on his lips, because he won't beg. He won't beg. She won't make him beg. He moves his hips, rubbing his arousal against her leg. No, he won't beg, but---god, he wants to beg right now.  
  
"Harder," he instructs. Just to be difficult.  
  
  
Her breath hitches as he shifts his hips, and Irene's fingers do, momentarily, clench, digging harder into his chest. But then he's being difficult and she refuses to let him win, so she forces her hand to let go, to brace her weight on her arm on the bed instead of resting against him, and pulls away just enough to beginning running her fingers in featherlight touches along the fabric his erection is straining against.  
  
She smiles.  
  
  
The featherlight touch against his arousal combined with the bite of the handcuffs is enough to make him all but buck in desire. He used to be much, much better at controlling himself, but the Woman is the master of sexual manipulation.  
  
No. No, it has nothing to do with that. Any other woman in any other hotel room would not have even succeeded in moving blood from his brain to its current location. No, it's _her_ , the Woman. She does this to him. She does it, and he can't control it, and part of him would never want it to change.  
  
" _Please_." The plea comes out before he can stop himself.  
  
  
He bucks up against her and she can feel him strain, muscles taut beneath skin, and her smile grows.  
  
 _Please._ The single word slides like liquid honey down her spine, warm and pleading and everything she expected making him beg would be like. She leans up to kiss him, slow and teasing, and her legs straddle his. No doubt he could feel precisely his effect on her in that motion, and she doesn't care that he knows.  
  
"Please what, exactly?" she murmurs against his lips, her fingers still reaching down, tracing light touches against a long vein that practically pulsed against her fingers. "For more or to take off the cuffs?"  
  
  
He should ask for the cuffs to be taken off. She wants him to beg, and now that he's begging, she will give him what he wants. With the cuffs off, he could regain some control, he could return some of the torment. He could fight back, which was what he wanted. But then she traces her nails along a sensitive, pulsating point of his arousal, and he finds himself torn. Taking off the cuffs could mean it was over. And he most certainly does not want it to be over.  
  
He is not one to speak often without thinking, but he does, this time. The words tumble out.  
  
"More," he breathes. "Please."  
  
The humiliation at begging is good in itself. She's beating him again. She's the only one who could.  
  
  
There is a bone-deep satisfaction in domination, in reducing someone to quivering submission and begging, in being The Woman and utterly untouchable. But only Sherlock Holmes has ever made her want to be The Woman and touched. To want to win and lose at the same time.  
  
They are too alike, in most ways, to be satisfied with anything as simple as victory. Too similar to always win. And too intrigued by the prospect of losing to each other to leave. To walk away and disappear in Australia.  
  
He begs again and his pleading sends another warm coil of want running through her, pooling in the pit of her stomach, desire and arousal both mental and physical almost an actual ache. Irene laughs, the sound more a moan or a purr of approval than an actual laugh, and eases herself down his body, no longer pressed up flushed and soft against him, the illusion of contact again an illusion of radiant heat and proximity, except for her hand reaching into his boxers and freeing him from its straining confines.  
  
A sharp, anticipatory smile, her eyes dark and dilated, watching him, as she first strokes him with the supple leather of the belt, then trace the exact same path it had taken with her tongue.  
  
  
He first feels the leather, and there's a moment where he wonders if she's going to strike him there. The idea is incredibly unpleasant, and he thinks that while the sharpness and surprise of pain might be good at first, it would definitely throw him out of this carefully constructed cocoon of arousal and intimacy they've bound themselves into. He tries to move his wrists, but they dig against the spikes. Soft fur, damp with his blood, and a gnawing pain every time he moves his wrists.  
  
The pain is complete contrast to the sudden sensation of her tongue on him, and his head falls backwards as he lets out a long sigh at the warm, wet sensation. He remembers his own arousal at tasting her, at tracing his tongue along her sex. Does the same apply for the Woman?  
  
  
This is intimacy she never offers her clients, intimacy she rarely offers even her occasional lovers. But she is observant and knowledgeable and she smiles, pleased, at the way the touch seems to undo him.  
  
It helps, too, to concentrate touch to a single point. It keeps her from being distracted by the tension humming under her skin as she wraps her lips around him in what she knows is a frustratingly light touch, then tracing her tongue along the pulsing vein her finger had traced earlier.  
  
Maybe she could make him scream before some slip, some noise gives away her own growing want.  
  
  
This is an experience he hasn't felt before. Her mouth, more pliable and controlled, is able to torture him even more viciously. He can feel the lightness of her tongue, the warm suction and it's---it's amazing. Amazing and bringing a slow, painful desire for release that doesn't quite reach completion.  
  
Quite the cruel mistress.  
  
"Woman---" he gasps. He's close to begging again, but he won't. He won't.  
  
  
The force of his reaction surprises Irene. She had almost expected him to hold on, to try to keep still and strain against his physical instincts but he is gasping for her without prompting. Her own body aches, craves touch and heat and warmth, but Irene pushes that aside as best she can. She laughs, the sound a low warm vibration against sensitive flesh and and draws the leather belt along the base of his shaft and along his thigh in a slow, steady stroke.  
  
At the same time, she leaves a soft, lingering kiss against the tip of his erection. Competing, contradictory sensation. "Yes?"  
  
  
He lets out a little laugh at her reply. She's far too calm in this, and that strikes him as completely unfair. He imagines a lot about sexuality involves unfairness, especially when handcuffs and the Woman are involved.  
  
He lifts his head to look down at her, his eyes bright with arousal but his lips curled in cool defiance.  
  
"I'm not begging again," he informs her.  
  
  
She meets his gaze without hesitation, and her eyes are just as bright, dark and dilated, and despite the lack of touch her skin is flushed and sensitive. Blood rushing to the surface, no doubt.  
  
"Because you've already begged twice?" Her voice is far too low, too husky and breathless for her liking, but there is little Irene can do about that, cares to do about it. She lets the belt fall out of her hand and runs her nails along the sides of his legs. Without breaking his gaze, she bends over him, her hair brushing against his skin as she slowly, deliberately, takes the length of him into her mouth.  
  
  
"O--Oh."  
  
And with that, the cool defiance is gone completely, as he watches her in awe. There is an enormous amount of trust that goes into something like this, he thinks. Her, trusting him not to thrust into her mouth or lose control, and him trusting her to not bite down.  
  
Somehow they're back here, back to trusting. Even as he feels the bite from the handcuffs again, he does trust her. To a point. Anything farther than that point---well, that wouldn't be any fun at all.  
  
  
There is something in his expression as he watches her that she hasn't seen before, a rapt attentiveness that somehow seemed more genuine, less calculated than even the exhausted intimacy of Las Vegas. Her nails dig into the sides of his legs, and she slowly withdraws, her lips lingering along every centimeter until she has pulled away from him completely.  
  
"Now would be a very good time to leave you for an hour, I think," she tells him. She wouldn't. Her eyes, her skin, her pulse, she knows it all puts the lie to her words.  
  
  
"Fairly certain I'd chew through the handcuffs to stop you," he says. Very unlikely, mind. The leather is thick and the spikes would prevent too much movement of his hands. But he'd be hard pressed to let her leave. He didn't want to let her go before all of this started, much less now.  
  
"Or, you could remove them," he says. "I'd make certain you can't go."  
  
  
She laughs, a low hum of pleased approval as she rises, slowly, back to her feet. She takes a deliberate step back from him, her eyes dark and bright as she holds his gaze. "Hard to do that, with you still lying on them."  
  
  
He gets to his feet immediately. His wrists hurt from the position he was lying on them, but it doesn't matter. What matters is the lack of physical connection once she's up and away from him, and the lack of contact on his arousal. His skin feels cold, though he believes that is partially saliva as well as physical desire.  
  
He leans forward to press his mouth to her jaw again. To taste her.  
  
  
Her dress, mussed and torn, is suddenly no longer the armour it had been moments ago when she feels his mouth pressed to the curve of her jaw. It is simply entirely too much in the way as she arches into him, her hands reaching around him to undo the handcuffs.  
  
  
Even her hands undoing the cuffs causes pain to shoot up his arms, but he doesn't mind it so much. No, not with the taste of her sweat and skin under his tongue and the warmth of her body pressing against him.  
  
He doesn't love her. Love is so insignificant in comparison to this.  
  
  
A gasp, low and wanting, escapes Irene as his lips and tongue linger against her skin. She manages to free one of the handcuffs, and her thumb traces the double row of precise marks the pins have made in his skin, feeling the warm slickness of blood against the pad of her thumb.  
  
Her fingers fumble against the other cuff, she's distracted, but one is surely good enough.  
  
  
His hand, now free, moves up to tangle in her hair. Her thumb has his blood on it, and he can feel its slickness go across her cheek as he pulls her down to kiss him, hard and wanting.  
  
He's given in, he's been punished and he's begged. This almost seems like a reward, but the Woman is far more than a reward. She's far, far too---too _much_ for that. She is the sort of being that fills all the senses, and blinds him from what he needs to see.  
  
A nagging sense in the back of his mind tells him he should push her away. He ignores it.  
  
  
His hand is tangled in her hair, pulling her towards him and she is caught again, physically as well as mentally, and she kisses him back with all the fierce need she'd tried to ignore and push away the entire time she'd been teasing him. Her hand rests against his hip, and her nails dig into his side, pulling him to her.  
  
She can feel her control, the calm knowing discipline, the facade, slipping with the bruising kiss against her mouth, with his fingers caught in her hair. She isn't the one to lose control, to beg, but he undoes her, pulls apart the careful, practiced exterior and makes her want to give in.  
  
She moans, and it is almost a whimper of need as she kisses him back.  
  
  
Handcuff still dangling off of his other wrist, he lowers it down to pull her sweater dress upwards, and pull her closer as he lowers himself into a seated position on the bed. What an interesting time the maids will have, wondering where the blood came from. It would be obvious, he thinks, if they'd only _look_ , but they won't and it doesn't matter.  
  
He takes a gentle nip of her lower lip, which he follows up with a more harsh bite. What they have isn't love, but it is intense, unending, and painful. And he wants it.  
  
  
The air of the small cramped room is cool against her suddenly bared skin, raising gooseflesh on her arms, but Irene has far more pressing matters to attend to than immediate comfort. The momentary distance is too much and as he seats himself on the bed, she moves to straddle him, her hands pushing the opened shirt off his shoulders.  
  
He nips at her lower lip, then bites, and she inhales sharply in surprise at the pleasure and pain. Her entire body shudders and she grinds against him, her knickers slick with the arousal she'd tried to hide.  
  
  
He lets out another moan, this one against her mouth, at her warmth and wetness. Of course, if now were the appropriate moment to show off, he could list a dozen reasons why her arousal was obvious before now, but he has more than a few other things on his mind. Namely, the piece of fabric separating him, and the way her surprise tasted against his mouth.  
  
He pushes his hips upward, moving with the way she grinds against him.  
  
"You know," he says. "I actually think right now would be the ideal time for one of us to leave if we were going to."  
  
His hand in her hair tightens just slightly as she grinds against a particularly sensitive part of his arousal.  
  
  
Her hands clench against his shoulders as he rolls his hips and brushes against sensitive nerves. She matches him as he moves with her, but she cannot help but arch against him, throat bared, as his hand tightens in her hair. Her hips urge him on, almost unconsciously, and Irene has to swallow another whimper before she can gather enough of herself together to answer.  
  
"I'm not leaving."  
  
It feels distinctly like giving in.  
  
  
"Neither am I."


	10. Stalemate (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even as they strive to win, to break each other to pieces, Irene and Sherlock make a discovery that may change the fundamental understanding of their partnership.

Her throat is bared and he doesn't hesitate to return his mouth to it, tasting her with his tongue and planting not-nearly-so-gentle nips along her jugular. If there was some way to tear her open, to see all the ways she works, he wouldn't take it. It would ruin her, ruin what is most mysterious and beautiful about her.  
  
She is his unsolvable mystery. Aching to be solved, but never to be ruined.  
  
He pushes the offending fabric between her legs away with his thumb and presses against her.  
  
  
It's giving in because she'd known since the moment she hadn't walked out the door that she wouldn't be leaving. It's giving in to say it, to put the unspoken fact into words. He makes her give in, makes her beg, and no matter how often she can make him beg and plead, he still does the same to her.  
  
She gasps, at the rough touch of his mouth against her throat, and the gasp becomes a deep, wanting sigh as he pushes away the last barrier between them and presses up against her. Her hips buck against him, and every nerve seems to feel deliciously, painfully alive as her fingers dig deep into his back and shoulders.  
  
" _More_." She almost says please.  
  
  
"More?"  
  
Oh, but he'd love her to beg, too. He'd love it. He loves seeing her like this, gasping and wanting the way he does. There's a delicious shared cruelty between them, even in their sexuality, and he loves that, too.  
  
He pushes upwards into her, letting out another noise as he does so.  
  
  
"That doesn't count as-- _ah_ "  
  
The rest of her words are swallowed up by a wordless cry as he pushes up into her and she grinds down onto him. For a moment she is overwhelmed by pure sensation, and that too feels like losing, feels like giving in, for him to be able to do that.  
  
When awareness returns, she moves slowly against him, her hand unclenching from where she'd gripped his shoulder, nails having dug small, perfect crescents into his skin. Her fingers linger, trailing down his arm until she reaches the cuff still attached to his wrist, and she tugs on the leather, the pins biting into his wrist again.  
  
  
He cries out, more in surprise of the sharp pain than the pain himself. In retaliation, he thrusts harder into her. He tugs on her hair again, and when her jaw is exposed, he bites again, hoping to leave the sort of bruise he knows is forming on his own neck from her ministrations.  
  
He doesn't love her. This will never change, just as nothing ever changes. This city hasn't changed, even in the months he's been gone. And they haven't changed, he and the Woman, despite what they know about each other and how they've lied to each other, and the fact that they're here, now, bruised and aroused in this room, surrounded by a city that doesn't know they're alive. Wheels turn, but nothing changes.  
  
  
The last time they had been in London, there had been the same simmering tension, the same relentless _push_ between them. It had seemed different then, in the touch of a hand and the crackle of fire, in a brush of fingertips against a pulse. Now she is gasping in pain and pleasure as he drives deeper into her, his teeth at her jaw and his hand tangled in her hair.  
  
Her hips move with him, one hand still tight on the leather cuff. Her fingers have grasped the free cuff, and unconsciously dug into the pins lining the interior, but she refuses to let go, instead reaching up with the hand at his shoulder to tangle in his hair, to pull his mouth away from her jaw so that she could crush her lips to his, biting and sucking, heedless of the still-tender cut to his lower lip.  
  
It seems different now, but then a lifetime ago she had ripped him to pieces in the darkened cabin of a jumbo jet filled with the dead, and he had done the same to her in the sitting room of a fine old country house.  
  
Maybe this wasn't so different.  
  
  
She bites and pulls and his body bucks upwards. He's almost certain he's going to climax and lose control right then, but he grounds himself in the feel of the soft bed beneath him, and the warmth of the Woman above him and---and---  
  
She knows how to unravel him completely. She knows how to pull him to pieces, and he doesn't know how to stop her. Doesn't even think he could possibly stop her, simply because he likes the sensation of being pulled apart. Of feeling her digging those long nails into him and pulling everything to pieces.  
  
"Woman," he whispers against her hair. Pained, but loving.  
  
  
His breath hitches as he bucks up into her and Irene hears herself crying out at the unexpected sensation, the sound swallowed up by the feel of his mouth against hers. Her hand lets go of the leather cuff, small drops of blood welling up on her fingers. But his breathing changes again, catching himself, and she moves with him, matching his rhythm, prolonging this even as they seem to tear each other to pieces.  
  
A part of her thinks that this is perhaps more true to their natures than anything else, than the exhausted intimacy of Las Vegas, than the heated tension of Kotor. This is them tearing each other to pieces, inflicting pain and finding pleasure in every second of it.  
  
His breath is warm against her as he murmurs into her hair, the title that had become a salute, an epithet, and something like a term of endearment, and Irene feels herself tremble, straining for a physical release just out of reach. She gasps, and it is nearly a whimper as she kisses him again, rough and needy.  
  
" _Please_."


	11. Desperate Addictions (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the middle of London, between John Watson's wedding, Mycroft Holmes' attentions, and their own betrayals, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes find a small measure of understanding in the eye of the storm.

With that, he finds himself thrusting harder, in quick, sharp thrusts. She pulls on his wrists, he tugs on her hair, and they are, at once, a balance of each other. Hurting and pleasure in equal measures. He pulls on her hair but kisses her back desperately.  
  
No, it isn't love, but he would never find himself this desperately longing for Molly Hooper. She would never be able to tie him up in the same knots that the Woman could.  
  
He feels himself holding back---just barely holding back---from that final release. He keeps his movements up into her quick and sharp, but his body wants to curl over the edge to orgasm.  
  
  
They are a balance that never lasts, that breaks and tumbles and falls spectacularly, and they draw each other in again and again. Like comets burning away too close to the sun that draw back again and again in eccentric orbits. Or addicts and their drugs. The comparison of who is what would have been obvious, if Irene wasn't certain that she was as drawn to the thrill of him as he was to her.  
  
He kisses her back, and she can almost taste the desperation, the need on his lips as strongly as it hums in her veins. He is thrusting up into her with quick, sharp strokes that are _nearly_ enough to send her over the edge and it is maddening. She growls with frustration, though it sounds almost like a plea to her ears, and lets go of his cuffed wrist fully, sliding her hand between them for the friction that would send her over the edge.  
  
  
He feels the release on his wrists, and knows she's going to make more friction between them, to stimulate the nerves she needs to reach the end. Part of him wants to slow down for her, to make her release as long and as painful as possible, but he isn't that cruel. Mind, he _is_ that cruel, but he's less patient for himself. He wants to continue like this, he wants to orgasm because he's been teetering on the edge far too long.  
  
He thrusts in time to her fingers' movements, and draws his now-free hand down to her hip, to push her down deeper, to force her into his rhythm. He digs his short fingernails into her hip. The half-moons he might create will be nowhere as impressive as the bruises he's already forming, but the sentiment is there.  
  
Sentiment. He can't think about sentiment, it might pull him away from how close he is to orgasm.  
  
  
He's trying to force her to his rhythm, and her instinct is to resist, to drive him to hers, because she is used to command, but she is so _close_ and he is pushing her down deeper onto him and his fingers are digging deep into her hip. And she wants release more than she wants to win, so she caves, her fingers and her hips moving to match his rhythm, her lips trailing down the side of his neck to leave yet another bruise.  
  
And almost immediately, all the coiled tension and desire, the smoldering heat that had pooled in the pit of her stomach and at the base of her spine... pent up frustration and anger and stimulation, everything they do to each other mental and physical, it all washes over her in shuddering release. Her body clenches tight around him at the force of her orgasm and she cries out, the sound muffled against his shoulder.  
  
  
She clenches tight around him, and he falls over into orgasm as well. Oh, but it would've been nice to continue, to keep up with this battle that, for the first time, he feels he has the upper hand in. But he couldn't. Because to be the Woman and to be Sherlock Holmes, they can never push too far ahead of the other. They always remain in balance.  
  
He cries out as well, his hand moving from her hip to wrap around her waist and hold her tight as he thrusts in a few more times with the completion of his orgasm. He can smell her, he can feel her, but he can't possibly imagine letting her go right now.  
  
Though she will go. That is the way of them.  
  
"Sydney is far more boring than London," he says, quietly.  
  
  
He is warm beneath her, his arm tight around her waist as he thrusts and eventually shudders with his own release. Her skin feels flushed, the air of the small room no longer a chill that raises gooseflesh. She rests against him, unable, no, unwilling, to move, until he speaks. Even then she lingers for a moment until the fragile silence stretches to its breaking point.  
  
Only then does she pull away, just far enough to push a lock of damp red hair out of her face. "London's not as kind to the dead," she answers. It is as much a reminder to herself as to him. "And you're not ready for a resurrection."  
  
She says nothing of Sydney.  
  
  
"You're right," he says. "But it's still _far_ more boring."  
  
They will have to part from this position, he knows. She'll need to clean up, he'll need to tend to his wrists and the lovely little marks left from her nails. They'll need to rebuild their armor, put it back up before they leave again. They are so very alike, he knows this, and when they make themselves vulnerable to each other, they always must make certain that they're not making themselves vulnerable to the world.  
  
Being vulnerable at the wrong moment means losing. Neither of them can lose, not right now.  
  
  
"Less boring's always depended on the company."  
  
The thought comes to Irene's mind that this, this momentary closeness, feels like the center of a storm. That there was an almost unnatural closeness here between them that was more than just the flush of post-coital endorphins, more than just the press of skin against skin.  
  
It won't last. She knows it won't. Like the eye of a hurricane, they are too fond of pushing each other, too fond of tearing things to pieces, for this to last. But that makes it easier to accept, to linger in the moment knowing it will pass.  
  
She shifts against him, not enough to pull away but enough to take her weight back onto her own legs, and the tips of her fingers run down his arm, to the restraint still attached to his wrist. Her touch is light, barely pressure on the cuff or its pins.  
  
"Let me see?"  
  
  
He nods, slowly. Of course she can see. Part of what he researched when he first found out about her involved dominatrixes---dominatricies?---and their clients, and the aftercare involved. To some, it was even more important than the act of domination itself. However, with the Woman, he imagines that her actions are less about required aftercare and more with an actual amount of caring.  
  
At least, part of him hopes so. That part can not be anywhere visible come the time they leave this room, so he decides to let it run its course, like a stomach flu that will pass in a matter of hours.  
  
He leans up and presses a gentle kiss to the bruise he's left on her shoulder.  
  
  
Irene Adler rarely _cared_ , in any sense of the word. It was one of the reasons she had had Kate, to take care of the clients whose likes ran to softer things after the fact, those who needed to be coddled and cared for more than just the cursory physical care she was capable of.  
  
But as she draws his wrist up for a look, as she undoes the buckle fastening it, there's a delicacy, a gentleness to her touch that is almost uncharacteristic of the Woman. Her thumb traces along the neat line of pin marks until she finds the broken pin and extracts it with a steady hand. There's blood, but the wounds looks superficial. The handcuffs had been made for pain and play, not serious injury.  
  
She shivers at the light touch of his lips against the growing soreness at her shoulder, and her thumb brushes along his wrist again. There is a smile in her voice as she muses, "Pity, Her Highness will just have to make do with the one."  
  
  
He's not even remotely worried about his wrist, the blood so minor and the wounds very little. They sting as the pins are removed, but it's hardly enough to worry him. He's far more focused on her, the way she touches his wrist, the way she connects to him with gentle touches and steady hands.  
  
He wants to keep her. He wants her to understand what that sort of a want means to him. She can't, of course, as so very few have understood his needs and desires. But he does want it. He wants to know that she will always be there, even if it is just a flirtatious text bothering him during his deepest sleep cycle.  
  
Everything they are is so fragile right now.  
  
"It will cause enough of a stir, I imagine."  
  
  
She'd satisfied herself with the knowledge there is only the one pin that had broken off in his skin, but Irene doesn't let go, not immediately. They are close, vulnerable, and for once not trying to tear each other's armour apart. It's a strange feeling. Not unpleasant, but strange. It won't last, and she wouldn't want it to.  
  
She finally lets go of his wrist, and draws back far enough to look at him, to trace the bruises she can already see forming at his collarbone, at the curve of his throat. She runs her thumb over them, heedless of the smudge of blood the passage leaves behind.  
  
"It'll alleviate their boredom, at least."  
  
  
He looks down at where she touches his collarbone. No matter how intimate they are, even now, little touches always surprise him. They always throw him, like an unexpected corpse at a crime scene.  
  
Ah, but the Woman is his perfect crime scene. Mysterious clues, strange, unexpected twists and turns. Smears of blood and forged identities. She makes him want to be enthralled by her, and he is. He wants to tell her this, he thinks, because it makes sense, because it makes her special and unique to him. He simply does not think she will understand.  
  
"Does it ever bother you?" he asks. "That no one else would understand us?"  
  
  
Her hand stills in its path, where the bruise is already growing bright against pale skin. She regards him as he looks down at where her fingers linger along his collarbone, and considers the question.  
  
The implication that even _they_ understood what they were is almost laughable. But then that was part of the appeal, that when everyone else in the world was so clear, so _obvious_ , that they were still each other's mystery, the unknown in an opera house full of deductions and known desires.  
  
Unlike her clients, or even her occasional lovers, he manages to surprise her, to turn the tables and make winning an actual challenge rather than a certainty, and with that came the distinct possibility of losing, of relinquishing control. And for perhaps the only time in Irene's life the possibility is more thrilling than frightening.  
  
"I think the idea that anyone else _could_ would bother me more."  
  
  
He nods. There is a fleeting moment where he thinks about laying his head against her shoulder, about holding her in a loving fashion. The thought is, of course, fleeting, and he resumes simply sitting there, with her atop him, tracing his bruises. He prefers it when she initiates the sentimental touches.  
  
"You've nothing to worry about," he says. "There is no one else like you."  
  
There is no one else like him, as well. He often hoped he might find someone who was like him in order to validate his own existence. To be able to see that there was someone else who might understand. Mycroft is the closest he has ever come to that.  
  
The Woman comes in a close second.


	12. Once More Into the Fray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their score and their betrayals seemingly settled by blood, sex, and pain, it remains that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler are in London while Mycroft Holmes still thinks they're dead. And John Watson's wedding approaches.

Irene laughs, but it is quiet, almost more like a warm rush of air than a laugh, but there is a touch of something real and genuine and almost vulnerable in it, free of her usual touch of arch amusement. "That makes two of us," she answers, leaning in and touching a fleeting kiss to his cheek.  
  
Fleeting, vulnerable. It's unlike them, and yet couldn't be _more_ like them. Contradictory.  
  
Irene shifts, moving with every intention of standing up, of moving to the shower to clean up. "There's formalwear hanging behind the door," she says, seeming to change the subject. She doesn't tell him that the suit had been chosen to disguise his distinctive frame, or that her dress is the exact same colour as the one she'd worn in Kotor. "If you insist on going through with this madness."  
  
So she says, but there is no objection in it, no real recrimination or skepticism. They are already here, already risking everything. What was one more risk?  
  
  
He nods. Part of him would love to hold her longer, but he relaxes as she shifts to stand and clean up. His wrists sting, but there's no serious damage done. Nothing a well-placed watch or a cuff couldn't easily conceal from the average eye. There's only one non-average eye.  
  
No. There are two.  
  
"Mycroft is still in London," he says. "The girl never made it to her destination."  
  
This time, his voice isn't angry or accusing, it is simply acknowledging what is true.  
  
  
She rises, ignoring the sudden unsteadiness in her legs, and the sudden lack of closeness, of warmth as she draws away from him. Their moments of vulnerability do not last, she reminds herself, that this is how they simply _are_ , how they need to be.  
  
This is how they play the game.  
  
"The cab driver, I suspect," she says. She doesn't remember the driver, can barely recall his face. She wonders if he could have been Moran, and she just hadn't noticed, having been too weakened, too tired, too preoccupied to realize it.  
  
  
Sherlock thinks. He closes his eyes and tosses his mind back.  
  
"He kept his face away from us," he says. "He only briefly glanced at you."  
  
  
She pauses on her way to the cramped bathroom at his answer. Her expression is directly hidden from him, though there was no guarantee he wouldn't see her frown in a mirror.  
  
That Moran had been in Hong Kong meant that he had to have known the Black Lotus' plan, which meant that his silence had been purposeful. And it had been to... _what_? To lure him there, to keep them unbalanced...  
  
It was clumsy, unpredictable, which meant she needed to regain the upper hand. Irene shook her head and continued to the bathroom, her voice muffled as she entered, not bothering to close the door.  
  
"It doesn't matter. How does it change London if he doesn't know you're still alive?"  
  
  
He sees the frown, but he doesn't understand it. There are forty-three different reasons she could be frowning, and he can't work out which ones it isn't.  
  
Her question pulls him briefly from his thoughts, mostly with irritation. "Oh, do try to think," he says, though his voice is less genuinely irritated and more---fond? He can't even tell what that's supposed to mean.  
  
"The CCTVs will catch us if they haven't already," he says. "And Mycroft is in the city, as opposed to half a world away. Our deadline for leaving has turned into right after John Watson's wedding."  
  
  
"You always think I don't already have an answer when I ask a question."  
  
Her tone is coloured with amusement, but his answer does confirm what she'd expected. She almost suggests abandoning the wedding, but there is no point in it, and she felt too worn out, too _vulnerable_ at the moment to fight him on it.  
  
Once their respective armour had been pulled together again, they'd try to pull it down. But not until then.  
  
She starts the shower running, warm steam beginning to rise and roll over her skin. "Do you--" She stops, swallows back the invitation to have him join her. It had been instinctive, almost, a part of her wanting to prolong this strange little intimacy, but hardly conducive to... well anything.  
  
"I'll see myself to the palace beforehand then, unless you don't think they'll be watching for you there."  
  
  
Does he? He stands and steps over to the shower, not bothering any sort of pretense of privacy. They've known each other far too well to imagine otherwise. He leans against the edge of the stall, watching her as the water runs over her shoulders and hair.  
  
She isn't the pristine beauty he met so long ago in Belgravia, but she's his mystery, nonetheless.  
  
"Is that a question I'm not meant to answer?" he asks.  
  
  
Water sluices over her, and the familiar motions of simply washing up are armour in and of themselves. The feel of warm water soaking through her hair, of steam curling against her skin. Of lathering up with the inn's complimentary soap and shampoo. The change in the light of the room as he approaches is enough to tell her he's standing there, watching, but she doesn't turn, merely tilts her head up to let the water run down her face, washing away the traces of his blood off her skin.  
  
She can categorize her own scars: the healing stitches along her forearm from Las Vegas, the yellowing fading bruise on her cheek from Hong Kong, the rib that still made breathing too deep painful from the same incident, the old scar along her side from Karachi... Being dead was harder than living, or so it would seem.  
  
She doesn't answer for a long moment, content to let the water wash over her. But eventually she lowers her head, lets the water run through her hair, before she answers, "If I said yes, would you answer it just to be contrary?"  
  
  
"Considering you never properly finished the question, it might be difficult to," he replies  
  
  
That makes her pause, her fingers stilling in her hair as she pivots to look at him. She had thought he'd meant the unspoken question about Buckingham Palace, not the abortive sentiment.  
  
"That wasn't the question I thought you'd answer."  
  
  
"You know I don't care about what goes on at the palace," he says. He looks around the shower stall, as if attempting to decide the best point of entry for a surgical procedure, and eventually simply steps in next to her.  
  
Sentiment itself should be something he doesn't care about, but it has become unavoidable. The Woman is quickly putting herself into a position where he might jump off a building for her, the way he did for John Watson.  
  
"It's not the ideal space for sharing," he admits.  
  
  
"Not so difficult to figure out after all," she replies with a wry smile on her lips. She steps back out of the spray as he enters, and her gaze sweeps over him, her eyes lingering on the marks she's left on him.  
  
The wry smile becomes a pleased one, though she knows he's left similar ones on her. "Is any of this ideal?"  
  
  
Any of it?  
  
Oh, sex is enjoyable, he supposes, though he's still relatively new to the whole experience. But what's most enjoyable, what's most _ideal_ , are those challenges she gives him. Deducing people in an opera house, stealing priceless jewelry, and racing a car down a dirt road in Las Vegas. It's an adventure, of sorts, and while it's hardly _ideal_ , he wouldn't trade it.  
  
He shan't say _that_ , however. He'll just stand closer to her, so he can get under some of the spray of water next to her, to wash the blood from his wrists, and the smell of sweat and sex from his body.  
  
  
She is tempted by his proximity, by the very confines of the stall, to lean into him, to brush up against bruised flesh to see if he'd flinch away or respond. But that was hardly conducive to cleaning up, to rinsing away the traces of vulnerability that still clung to them.  
  
So instead she leans back against the cool tile of the stall, and lets him have the water. Irene nods at the old scar on his thigh, the scar tissue now crisscrossed with the bright, new bruises inflicted by her hand. "Case, client, or brother?"  
  
  
He is surprised that she gives him the water, but he takes advantage of it, washing his hair quickly and running soap over his wrists. They feel good, actually, like a reminder of what occurred. They won't even scar, that's obvious, but he'll remember, and that's enough.  
  
"Case," he replies, without looking at her or the scar. "Mycroft's obsession with protecting me has nothing to do with previous physical injuries."  
  
He takes a step back out of the water for her to get back under.  
  
  
She's surprised that he answers, surprised that it is an answer that tells her more about him. Water falls between them for a moment before she steps back into the spray, rinsing off the last of the lather clinging to her hair.  
  
"No? And here I thought I could see you climbing trees just because he told you you couldn't."  
  
  
He lets out a little hum of approval and his lips twist into a small smile.  
  
"Spending my time with dangerous women."  
  
  
She runs a hand through her hair, a cursory gesture to ensure that all the lather is out of her hair, and gives him a sidelong smile.  
  
"More than one. Should I be jealous, Mr. Holmes?"  
  
  
"Hardly," he says. "But Molly Hooper did date our dearly departed Jim Moriarty for a time."  
  
And, while hardly the most luminous of people, she was the only one of two people in the world that knew his secret. And she was fiercely loyal. A dangerous woman in the most flexible of senses. Very different from the Woman.  
  
  
She raises an eyebrow at that particular revelation, and steps out of the spray, heedless of a spot of soap still clinging to her arm.  
  
"Did she now?" Irene says as she makes to step out of the stall. "I think I have better taste."  
  
  
Similar tastes, but where Molly was predictable in her loyalty, the Woman was starkly mysterious and challenging. Where Molly genuinely believed that Jim cared for her, where the Woman would've seen through it.  
  
He steps under the water again and rinses his hair. He runs his hand over his jaw. He needs to shave. The last few days haven't been productive for hygiene. Especially if he's planning on going to a wedding later. As a blond.  
  
"She learned her lesson, unfortunately." He spends another few minutes soaping himself up once she's stepped out and he has complete control over the stall.  
  
  
As she wraps a thick towel around herself, Irene wonders if the seemingly offhand remark was supposed to be commentary, that he'd figured out completely what she was trying to do. She doubts it, but the idea comes to mind nonetheless.  
  
She steps out of the room, taking advantage of the momentary privacy to send another text. `So you found yourself a girl. Congratulations. But best be running, Sebastian.` And to lock the phone again.  
  
"The predictable thing to say would be 'haven't we all?'"  
  
  
"Not everyone," Sherlock says. "Otherwise, John wouldn't be getting married."  
  
He lets the water run over his face, and realizes that he can feel the bones in his lower jaw more clearly than before, even with the stubble. He doesn't have John telling him to eat. He doesn't have ennui while he's out here. Not while he's with the Woman.  
  
She stimulates him so much, it could kill him faster than the cocaine.  
  
  
Anger and arousal had faded, and even as Irene rounds the small room, she realizes that the unsteadiness in her legs hadn't been exclusively from the sex and the anger. She tries to recall the last time she'd eaten, realizing it might have been on the flight from Hong Kong but perhaps even before then.  
  
She leans against the edge of the bathtub and picks up the sweaterdress, looking for the rip to see if it is still wearable, and laughs quietly when she finds it.  
  
"Is this the second or third time you've ripped my things? I think I may have lost count."  
  
  
"Hardly my fault your clothing is problematic," he replies. He shuts off the water and looks for the next towel. It doesn't appear to be where he expected it. Did the Woman take the only towel?  
  
He peers his head out of the stall over to the Woman. That towel looks warm and comfortable, and he steps over to her, dribbling water on the floor as he attempts to remove the towel from her to dry himself.  
  
  
"Hardly my choice in clothing's fault that you're over-enthusiast--." Her answer is cut off as he tugs at the towel, and she instinctively slaps his hand away. "What are you doing?"  
  
  
"There's only one towel," he says. His voice holds the tone that says 'Obviously.'  
  
  
She just stares at him for a moment, nonplussed, and eventually laughs again, rising from her lean against the bathtub and handing him the towel.  
  
"Dinner?"  
  
  
He raises an eyebrow and takes the towel. She's exposed to him now, and he assumes that 'dinner' means more than it means, as it always does to her. He takes the towel and runs it over his hair.  
  
"So soon?"  
  
  
Her brow furrows in momentary confusion at his question, but the puzzle pieces fall into place a second later and she shakes her head, the expression her face undeniably amused and undeniably fond.  
  
It should astonish her, she thinks, that they can be so much themselves, so utterly extraordinary and perfectly capable of understanding what makes each other tick one moment and the next sound so ordinary in their misunderstandings.  
  
"I meant the pub downstairs." A pause, and a wicked smile. "For once."  
  
  
His eyebrows go up.  
  
"Oh?" He looks back to the door. "I---certainly."  
  
  
The room is small enough that she manages to find her bra, though the knickers are a lost cause, and she tosses them and the torn dress on the bed. The bruises he's left on her throat are vivid against her pale skin, but she seems utterly unaware or uncaring of it.  
  
That wicked smile lingers on her lips. "Interesting what you assumed. I never expected 'insatiable' to be on the list of adjectives I could use to describe you, Mr. Holmes."


	13. The Pursuit of Minutiae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson's wedding ahead of them, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler turn their attentions to the minutiae that their respective plans require. But... how welcome is that attention to detail, and will they clash again over it?

There was no response to her text while she went about London after the diversion to the pub for a meal, not that Irene had expected one as she'd stopped in at Harrods, and traded the torn sweater dress for clothes more to her liking, as well as a hat that managed to be stylish while obscuring her features. She tied her hair back, and between the long red length of it and the hat, she looked very much unlike Irene Adler, though very much the stylish, well-to-do tourist, brisk and professional.  
  
Which was what the guards at Buckingham Palace saw: a bored, condescending Parisienne who took the tour through the palace with a sneer, worthy of a moment's irritation, but passing through their memories like a ghost. She expected the handcuffs she'd left behind, with its unsigned card of congratulations on nuptials, was not going to be well received. But also completely unpublicised.  
  
It was precisely what she needed, a moment of fun, all in the name of misbehaviour, and utterly her own. A reminder that she was still utterly herself, utterly Irene Adler, utterly The Woman, no matter how far the late Sherlock Holmes wormed his way under her skin, no matter how thoroughly she found herself caught in his orbit again and again.  
  
It helped to remember, to make plans that would come to fruition without him. To remind herself that this was all temporary. A holiday from death and anonymity.  
  
She does not return to the small room at the inn until two hours before John Watson's wedding.  
  
  
Sherlock leaves after she does. He's more cautious as he goes through London, making certain to find shops that aren't near CCTV cameras until he's picked up the right shade of hair dye and applied it. He also stares across the street at Mrs. Hudson wandering in and out of 221 Baker Street. John, of course, wouldn't be here. He'd be with his soon to be wife. Of course, that's---of course that's right.  
  
Three hours until the wedding, and he's put on the suit the Woman acquired. It fits so poorly, and that makes him smile. Of course, she picked one that would fit incorrectly, that fit in just the right way to hide the shape of his frame. John might even walk right past him and miss him completely over the extra bulk in different places along his body.  
  
The door opens to the room and Sherlock doesn't bother looking away from the mirror.  
  
"Well picked," he says.  
  
  
She opens the door to the room and freezes at the seeming stranger with his back to her. It would have taken another half second for her to recognize him if he hadn't spoken. But he does, and she relaxes, her initial surprise falling away to be replaced by sharp scrutiny.  
  
"I thought you wanted to avoid blond," she says as she closes the door. The vulnerability and intimacy of earlier has evaporated like fog, and she moves through the room with her customary confidence. She unzips the other bag, revealing a simple sheath dress. Material cheaper than what she herself preferred, the garment itself a few seasons past, Second hand, obviously worn before by someone used to a wedding ring. But the same shade of midnight blue as the dress back in Kotor.  
  
  
Sherlock approves of the dress and its color, and he quickly imagines what it will look like once she's in it. Not like the Woman, not like Irene Adler, but attractive nonetheless. Appropriate for a wedding, but not so outstanding that she'll be noticed.  
  
"And Mycroft would be less likely to recognize me with this particular shade," he says. "He will be there, in one form or another."  
  
He takes out a cigarette and lights it. It's his favorite brand, one he hasn't had in a very long time. Imports are more difficult to come across at varying points in the world.  
  
"I've acquired us tickets to Nassau. We can purchase the others to San Salvador once we've arrived."  
  
  
She switches the amethyst ring from Kotor from the fourth finger on the right hand to the left, to match the wear in the dress, and sheds the hat and the Parisienne's clothes. Her undergarments are also new, an indulgence she didn't bother resisting. Sumptuous, fine silk and lace, but undoubtedly wicked. Another small reminder of being Irene Adler beneath the tourist's disguise, and now again beneath the disguise of the anonymous wedding guest as she steps into the dress.  
  
The pretense of Australia is gone, if it had ever been anything but a pretense, and she is about to ask about Nassau when the acrid scent of the lit cigarette catches her attention as she carefully attempts to zip herself up. "Not worried about the cigarette giving you away?"  
  
  
"Not from John," Sherlock says. "Or anyone else likely to be there."  
  
Perhaps it's ego, but Sherlock is fine with that. No one apart the two of them know is observant enough to notice him. He's not worried about that. There are other things on his mind, other _concerns_.  
  
"How long since we've reacquainted, Woman?" He knows the answer, of course.  
  
  
Dressing would have been easier if she'd simply demanded his help in zipping the dress, but some mix of pride and avoidance keeps her from it, and Irene doesn't respond until she manages to zip herself up. Only then does she turn and arch an eyebrow at him.  
  
"The answer depends on whether you're being indelicate, Mr. Holmes."  
  
  
His eyebrow raises.  
  
"I don't understand," he says. It's a simple enough question, in his mind.  
  
  
She laughs softly and shakes her head, reaching into the bag again to pull out a box with a pair of inexpensive cufflinks, which she tosses at him.  
  
"Two weeks, give or take a few days. Hard to be exact with all the travel. Why?"  
  
  
"Caution," he says. "We've had intercourse unprotected several times, I simply don't want to...burden you."  
  
Since Sherlock knows she would be the one burdened. He is ill-equipped to properly take care of himself, let alone a child. Standing in line for his hair dye, he'd noticed a pregnant woman in front of him, and he realized just how _irresponsible_ they had been for the last few weeks.  
  
He also purchased a variety of condoms. In case.  
  
  
She stares at him, for a moment completely nonplussed, until the thought process behind his answer falls into place. Then, understanding and momentary irritation flit across her face. There were many things she could say, she supposes. She could be irritated by him taking it upon himself to be _responsible_ , could be touched that he'd thought of it at all, or simply annoyed that he was obviously now keeping track of what was ostensibly _her_ business.  
  
She supposes they're all valid, but Irene says nothing at all about it. "We should leave. The Tube or would you prefer acquiring a car?"  
  
  
"The Tube," he says. "Hardly our standard fare, and if Mycroft is watching out over the wedding, he'll notice a spare car faster than two spare people."  
  
He looks back at himself in the mirror. With the blonde hair and the ill-fitting suit, he doesn't look like himself at all. John Watson will look right over him, which is what he wants. He wants to be ignored for the moment, until he returns to his old life, then he wants it to all be as it was.  
  
Still, part of him wants to tell the Woman that he doesn't want to go. He'd rather just skip town now. He won't, of course. Too much invested in going, and admitting otherwise would be admitting it's bothering him.  
  
  
She shouldn't have been, isn't really, surprised by his answer. This is London. The place where he is most like himself, the place where he is the consulting detective and not the vigilante cutting down a criminal web. There isn't room here for misbehaviour, not for him.  
  
It reminds her again that this holiday will end. That she wants it to end on her own terms, and not his. Her hand grips the mobile as she transfers it from the pocket of the discarded clothes to a handbag, and a look equal parts determined and melancholic crosses her face as he hesitates in front of the mirror. "Even I hardly recognize you, and I know where to look," she says, voice light. "Unless you're preening, in which case I had no idea you had it in you."  
  
  
"You'd be surprised," he says, offering her a small smirk.  
  
They're both so full of secrets. He imagines no matter how many strangely intimate moments they have together, it will always be littered with their secrets and their inability to break through that.  
  
He offers her his arm.  
  
"We need to make one stop first," he says.


	14. The Eloquence of Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> London is more than just a city for the ghosts of Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes. And no trip back to London would be complete without a stop at 221B Baker Street. But where ghosts of spirit may walk through walls, ghosts of flesh and blood inevitably leave trails...

Her lips twitch upward in an answering smirk as she takes his arm. The handbag remains firmly on her opposite side, lest he tries to pickpocket it for the mobile. "The last time you suggested we make a stop we ended up in London," she reminds him, her hand warm and her grip firm but feminine on his arm. "You might not want to leave this one as a surprise."  
  
  
"Baker Street," he says. "There's something I need that I left behind."  
  
Risky. Very risky, and he knows it. All the same, if the Woman can get in without anyone seeing her, even Mycroft, then he can get in without being detected. It'll be more difficult with two, but it would also be twice the set of eyes looking out for Mycroft's men.  
  
  
She stops, stares at him, and takes a step back. Her hand doesn't leave his arm though, and in fact her grip tightens. It is not often that he surprises her, but this time it's clear he has.  
  
The surprise fades to an expressionless neutrality after a few heartbeats. "You do realize the risk you're taking."  
  
She has no doubt of the answer. She still wants to hear him say it.  
  
  
He catches the surprise. Of course she would be, considering how much work they've put into remaining anonymous, to staying under the radar.  
  
"It was always part of the plan," he says. "It's just more dangerous now that Mycroft is still in the city. How _did_ you find that out, exactly?"  
  
That argument had been cut short by---well, activities.  
  
  
She ignores the question and rests the hand not gripping his hand on her hip. No doubt he'd recognize the calculated flippancy in her words despite the careful neutrality of her voice. It's the same tone she'd taken with him in Las Vegas, while they argued next to an abandoned petrol station.  
  
"What exactly is in the flat that they wouldn't notice was gone?"  
  
  
"Something hidden," he says. "It wouldn't mean anything to you."  
  
This---well, he isn't entirely certain if it's a lie or not. It very well could be the truth, but he isn't about to risk the possibility that it isn't. At the doorway, he holds the door for her, still keeping their other arms connected.  
  
"We'll have a camera to take out first. CCTV on the back of the house. He installed it not long after your visit."  
  
  
It is exactly how they have been, the last two weeks, nearly three, she realizes. Pulling at each other, often in opposite directions, but always connected, by mutual death, by sentiment. She wonders if it will still be that way, once her plans for Moran come to fruition.  
  
It is in that moment that she realizes that if her plans are successful, that not only would she be ending her own exile in death, but his. If she takes control of the remnants of Moriarty's web, then she could disable whatever Moriarty had set in motion among the people he cared about that required his death.  
  
Fitting, perhaps.  
  
The thought flashes through her mind quickly, though perhaps not quickly enough to be completely missed, but she schools her expression back to its careful neutrality, though a hint of a smile tugs at her lips. "Figured out that blind spot, did he? Was that after the first, second, or third time I slipped into your flat?"  
  
  
"The second," he says. "The first time, I think he was so flustered by the situation that he missed the obvious."  
  
Baker Street isn't far. It's getting there without passing anyone who might recognize him that's difficult. It's not the people who's names he knew, no. It's the homeless network, the ones who watched him day after day, simply looking for a sign that he needed something from them. His _investments_ had excellent powers of observation. It was why they were so invaluable, when he was alive.  
  
"It shouldn't take more than a few minutes once we're in there."  
  
  
"If your neighbors still have that habit of leaving their window open for the dog, it'd be easy."  
  
She moves with him, falls into step next to him with an ease that normal people wouldn't have expected to develop in mere weeks of each other's company. But then they have never been ordinary. She gives him a sidelong glance, taking in the set of his jaw, the twist of a lip and the furrow of a brow.  
  
"If it really means nothing to me, you'd have just told me what it was you're looking to get back."

  
  


"Are you certain about that?" he says. "I think that's leaping to a deduction without thinking about all of the facts."  
  
Not that he's planning on walking her through this one, mind. He simply gives her a short, simple clue.  
  
"Can't arrive at a wedding without a gift." He turns the corner, and nods ahead. There are two CCTV cameras on this street, as well as a fire escape that could lead them upwards.  
  
"Risk it or not?" he asks.  
  
  
"I know what you like well enough to be concerned," she answers. A momentary frown as she looks up, though it is more at his words than the positioning of the CCTV. If he thinks she is contemplating the best route up, she wouldn't disabuse him of the notion.  
  
Was he looking to leave a clue with John Watson about his continued existence? Something from Baker Street would be undeniably familiar to the doctor, if not his new bride. But that in itself was idiotic and sentimental. But then so was London.  
  
Irene sighed and gave him a sidelong look as she reached down to remove her high heeled shoes. "You'd risk it whether or not I went along with it, wouldn't you?"  
  
  
"Of course," he says. He starts towards the fire escape and grabs a hold of the first rung, pulling it downwards. He gets a solid grip on it and pulls himself up, waiting for the Woman before he continues his climb. Unlike John Watson, Sherlock can't just leave her dangling behind, not in London.  
  
"Third neighbor on the left, wasn't it?" he asks.  
  
  
"Then someone has to keep you out of trouble," she says with a smirk as she begins to climb. There was a small truth in the statement, buried in the challenge and the wry amusement. An uncomfortable truth that is becoming slowly too obvious to ignore. That she cares enough to follow, that the easy denial of boredom is no longer enough.  
  
"That's the one. Might be easier for you to disable the camera while I slip through flat's window from the neighbor's." She curses as she nearly loses her grip on the shoes in her hand. "I expect the camera was added and mounted above my reach."  
  
  
"And give you full access to the flat for the thirty seconds it takes me to get in?" He gives her a look that indicates just how displeased he is by this idea.  
  
All the same, the camera _is_ mounted higher than she can reach, that's certain. Just far enough away that it's not easy for her, but shouldn't take too long for Sherlock. That would give them fifteen minutes before Mycroft's men came by.  
  
  
She pulls herself onto the landing of the fire escape and gives him an unrepentant smirk at the question. "Should have thought of that before," she answers, her enjoyment of his obvious displeasure apparent.  
  
  
He makes a face. He's slept next to her, he's given her access to _him_. The flat isn't anything more, he thinks. But the flat is his and _John's_ , and it's a staple of his old life. He shouldn't be concerned. He shouldn't care.  
  
He lets out a sigh and nods.  
  
"Fine. Just beware of the dust."  
  
  
If he'd said anything about _minding_ , she'd have pointed out that she'd been in that flat before. That she'd slipped into his old life three times without him realizing until she'd pointed it out. That she'd returned his coat, slept in his bed, and left her cameraph--  
  
A thought occurs to her, that the cameraphone is still likely _here_ in Baker Street, because she knows for certain it had never made it back to her file with the MoD.  
  
And now she had thirty seconds to get it back.  
  
A thrill runs down her spine at the very thought, and Irene swallows back the smile that threatens to tug at her lips. She turns away from contemplating the neighbor's window and the path to 221B and arches an eyebrow at him.  
  
"Remind me again _who_ has had more experience getting into your flat undetected?"  
  
  
"Yes, but I always knew you _had been there_ ," he says. "And the last thing we need is Mycroft knowing you've been there. Dust is eloquent, you can't replace it. If John's been as neglectful as I think he's been, there will be plenty of dust."  
  
Mrs. Hudson wouldn't have gone upstairs, she'd have stayed away. He thinks. He thinks he knows them well enough.  
  
He looks up the path. "It's odd how much has changed."  
  
  
"Death changes everything, doesn't it?" Irene doesn't bother pointing out how much it has changed _him_. And to speak of how much it has changed her, how it had cast her adrift and the holiday from it was reminding her what she _could_ and would soon do... Well, that would be giving away too much of the game.  
  
She tests the grip of stockinged feet against the ledge and listens for the telltale sign of the aforementioned neighbor and their dog. When she hears exactly what she expects, Irene nods at the camera in question. "I'd suggest you stop fretting about what I'm doing and take care of the camera before it picks up something."  
  
  
"Oh, all right."  
  
He lets out another very irritated and put-upon sigh and reaches across, carefully dismantling the camera. He's cautious enough to keep his gloved hands away from the lens, and he works to remove the wire and the secondary power source. Mycroft's cameras are much better than London's. Hardly surprising.  
  
  
She smirks with obvious satisfaction when he agrees, and waits two seconds to ensure he is doing his part before she rests a foot on the neighbor's window ledge. The interior is mostly quiet, though she can hear the clatter of claws against wooden floor and Irene smiles to herself. She whistles low as she crosses the open window, and is rewarded by the change in sound as the neighbor's dog becomes alert and heads for the open window.  
  
It's an inquisitive dog, friendly, not much of a threat. But its presence near the window may slow Sherlock down some as he crosses it. She gets a grip on the moulding of the brick facade and pulls herself up to the half ajar window of 221B Baker Street, easing her way in.  
  
Maybe it'll give her a few extra seconds.  
  
  
It takes him five seconds shorter than expected to fix the camera, but the moment his foot hits the ledge of the neighbor's house, he sees the dog approaching. All signs point to friendly, but the last thing he needs is to deal with a dog.  
  
The Woman's already ahead of him. It feels like a race between them to get to what he wants before he gets there. She's clever enough, she might make it before he does.  
  
  
The flat is quiet, as much as she can tell from outside, and Irene carefully pulls the window farther open to slip inside. A moment before she makes it inside, she looks over her shoulder to check his progress, and smiles at the sight before she disappears.  
  
She enters through the washroom, and the air inside is clean, if a bit stale despite the half-open window. Despite her dismissal of his caution, Irene does, in fact, mind the dust, and picks her way through the washroom to the door, slipping with easy familiarity into the flat proper. She glances over at the closed door to his room, and she can recall with ease the details within the first time she'd made her way into Baker Street, to return his coat. She suspects the room will be untouched. Left exactly as it had been the moment Sherlock Holmes jumped from the roof of St. Bart's.  
  
Too much of a risk then, for either of them, to look in there. So she heads for the sitting room.  
  
  
"Shoo, get away from there," Sherlock says, vaguely kicking his foot in the direction of the dog. How the hell did it find them so fast? From the way its fur is laying, it must've been lounging before, possibly asleep while its owners were out.  
  
It tries to lick Sherlock's shoe, and that's even more annoying. He tries to get a grip on the moulding of the window, but the dog has started barking excitedly. Not good. Not good at all.  
  
"Shut _up_ ," he hisses. With that, he gets his foot through the ajar window and moves to slide himself in.  
  
  
She tilts her head towards the window when she hears the barking begin. Excited, not threatening, a few more seconds then. She quickens her steps until she stands in the doorway of the sitting area, and she looks around with a considering eye. The phone would not have been in his bedroom, she thinks. His bedroom is too sparse, too much a product of how he wishes to appear, austere and without sentiment, to hold something like her phone.  
  
Not to mention she expects his bedroom to be the first place anyone would look for signs of his addictions, and he is too tightly wound, too insistent on his own lack of sentiment to wish that to be found quite so easily. Which was why her attention was on the sitting room.  
  
There's some metaphor here, she thinks, something about how John Watson's presence humanizes him, makes him able to do things like keep cameraphones and trinkets of importance. Makes him unwilling to leave her alone in this amalgam of their personalities. That while she and Sherlock Holmes leave their marks on each other's minds, on bodies and hearts and things invisible, John Watson has left his in Sherlock Holmes' _life_ , in visible passage and throw pillows and lined up books on bookshelves. But that was too overwrought for her tastes, and Irene began looking in earnest.  
  
Not behind the shelves, she thinks. He wouldn't have hidden it away too carefully, too deeply, for it would have betrayed a desire to hide, that he had something _to_ hide. And in the same vein, neither would it be displayed like a trophy; he'd have not wanted the physical reminder in view, not with the way he still denied their mutual sentiment. So not the mantlepiece, or a shelf.  
  
Somewhere out of sight, physically hidden but not too hard. Tucked away but accessible. His own version of denial, that he keeps it and yet doesn't feel enough to keep it hidden away. Her eyes land on the violin, left by the window, bow on the end table. Both violin and bow covered thickly with dust.  
  
She moves towards it.


	15. Who Watches the Watchers?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dust tells the passage of time, tells tales of loss and sadness and moving on. But there are other secrets to be kept in 221B Baker Street. Secrets of sentiment and ambition, of cameraphones and national secrets. But can Sherlock and Irene discover those secrets in each other and yet still keep themselves out of sight?

He scowls in the direction of the incredibly happy dog and grips the window, pulling himself in. He falls fairly gracefully to the floor of the kitchen, but not as silently as he'd prefer. Why he thinks he needs to be quiet around the Woman is beyond him. Maybe it's for the thing he's looking for, and the thing she thinks he's looking for.  
  
He slipped past the bedroom door and reached a hand back, wedged between the floorboard and the moulding of the door. He pulls it up and tucks it into his jacket pocket.  
  
He steps back and heads over to the sitting room, dusting himself off as though he'd just gotten up from the floor.  
  
"He hasn't been living here."   
  
  
She's examining the violin without touching it when she hears the thump of his landing somewhere behind her. Irene pauses and waits for a moment for a reaction. Nothing. She could have turned to confirm that it was him, she supposed, but that distinctly feels like it would be losing. To need that confirmation. Instead she lets a few seconds tick away, during which she continues examining the violin, and upon confirmation that there's been no modification, she turns her attention to the end table.  
  
Her hand is on the drawer when he speaks, and she turns to answer him over her shoulder. She arches an eyebrow, and doesn't bother pointing out that no future wife of John Watson's would want to live here, in this flat and all its obvious history. Instead, she nods as he dusts himself off, and opens the drawer.   
  
"What happened to minding the dust?"   
  
  
"Sorry, I was under the impression that dust wasn't as eloquent as I said it was," he says. His eyes go to the desk her hand is near. He sets his jaw. She's good. She's very good.  
  
"But I've found what I need, we can leave now," he says. "Told you it wouldn't be difficult. Just a matter of getting in and getting away."   
  
  
His gaze flickers to the desk drawer, and the set of his jaw changes. Minute details, tiny tells, but it is enough to make Irene think she's guessed correctly, at least the second time. Still, however, she frowns at his words, her eyes sweeping over him in an attempt to figure out what he'd come to find, what she'd missed.  
  
The ill-fitting suit made that difficult, hid the familiar lines of his form and made it hard to see where there were small changes. Her lips thin in irritation at that.  
  
"You sound bothered, Mr. Holmes," she says, her tone carefully careless as she turns her attention pointedly away from him and towards the half-open drawer. "Suddenly realizing how poor this plan really was?"   
  
  
"Not at all," he says. "Though an overactive dog may have attracted some attention we don't need."  
  
He raises his eyebrow in her direction. There is more than a small likelihood that the dog was called. What could she possibly have been looking for?  
  
There's a small noise in his pocket, and he pulls out his new mobile, eyebrows scrunching together as he looks at the message sent.  
  
"We need to leave. Now."   
  
  
Her camera-phone’s gleam is unmistakeable, with its gild and diamond accents, and Irene's hands close on it as his phone sounds. She nearly jumps, but her fingers keep their grip on the camera-phone   
  
She straightens, slipping the phone out of the drawer as she nods at his phone. "So we're finished being hypocritical as well? Wonderful."  
  
Irene nods towards the window, a smirk on her lips. "I doubt the dog attracted any attention, but if you insist."   
  
  
The muscles in his neck tense as her hands go around the camera-phone Its very presence shows sentiment, and the fact that she found it so quickly means she knows him far better than he'd prefer. He takes a few steps towards her, reaching his hand down to take a hold of her wrist.  
  
"Leave that," he says. He wants to add that someone, maybe John, would recognize its absence, but such a statement would be a lie. Its presence in the drawer was really only known to Sherlock, who would open the drawer on occasion simply to reassure himself that it was still there.   
  
  
She doesn't drop the camera-phone when his hand closes around her wrist. But then neither does her grip tighten on the thing. It's sentimental, to want it back, she knows it. But they are here and it is the only chance she has.  
  
She turns towards him, recognizing his closeness, and what a picture they would make if the housekeeper decided to break her routine and come up. Still she doesn't move, either to return the phone or to pocket it. Not yet.  
  
"Why?"   
  
  
"It's been wiped," he says, recalling John's words oh, so long ago. "There isn't anything on it."   
  
  
"Who said I was interested in what was left on it?" she answers, her eyes fixed on his.   
  
  
"Then what could you possibly need it for?" he replies. "Sentiment?"   
  
  
She arches an eyebrow at that, turning to face him more fully, even though her grip is still on the camera-phone and his on her wrist.   
  
"Do you really want me to ask why _you_ have it then?"   
  
  
"A trophy," he lies.  
  
He turns his phone to face her.  
  
"We _have_ to leave," he hisses. "There isn't time to argue."  
  
The phone has an incoming message. I see you.   
  
  
There is a challenge on her lips at his answer, an instinctive response, that trophies were kept when one _won_ , that keeping an empty shell even as a trophy was _sentiment_ , that if it were a trophy he would have kept it visible, rather than hidden away.   
  
But the text changes that, and Irene's lips thin at the three words. She memorizes the number that had sent the text, and lets go of the camera-phone, the expensive, empty piece of gilded technology thumping back into the drawer.   
  
Fitting, perhaps. But not something she can indulge or think on at the moment. "Your housekeeper should have left for the wedding," she says crisply, stepping away and breaking his grip on her wrist. "Down the stairs and out the back?"   
  
  
"Yes," he replies.  
  
The wedding. He wants to be there. He wants to be there more than he can possibly say. However---however. He swallows the sentiment, the _desire_. More important things. More important things and he can't possibly put John Watson's life in danger.  
  
"Neighbor has a Vespa," he says. "Hardly inconspicuous, but I don't think that matters at this point."   
  
  
She doesn't think this will impact his insistence on going to John Watson's wedding at all. Doesn't realize what he's thinking. Because nothing else has, despite the danger. Still, she slips the shoes back on and heads down the stairs, reaching for her own mobile. She keys in both the number she's had for Sebastian Moran and the new one she'd memorized off his phone.  
  
`So you're back in London. Might want to run, pet, before I tell him where to find you.`  
  
"Not exactly dressed for it, but I suppose that isn't much of an argument," she agrees, hitting send.   
  
  
He notices the light of her mobile as he turns to shut the door to the flat.  
  
Time. Such little time. Too little time to worry about who she's texting. He's never properly trusted her, apart from their strange, intimate trysts that leave them both without their armor. But her trustworthiness has never really mattered before, not before London. Here, things are different. Here, things are a battlefield.  
  
"Back door," he says. "Through Mrs. Hudson's flat."   
  
  
The answer is immediate, her phone chiming its text alert as he mentions the landlady's flat. She suppresses a smile. That quick a response could only mean that she'd been right.  
  
`Bitch.`  
  
A second text, on the heels of the first. `What do you want?`  
  
She stops, nearly bumping into a dreadfully garish, old couch in the landlady's living space, and considers the question. "Jim wanted you dead," she says, "And he was threatening your friends to make sure it happened. They know you're alive, so why are your friends still alive?"  
  
She knows the answers, at least, is fairly certain she does, given how sporadic, how fear driven Moran's actions have been. But she wonders if he's recognized it yet.   
  
  
He reaches out to catch her wrist again, gripping it tighter this time.  
  
"That's who that is," he says. "The one you've been in contact with. The one who is threatening me. Jim's friend. He told you that Mycroft wasn't in London."  
  
He understands a lot of what's happened, he's deduced an enormous amount, but there's still so much he _doesn't_ know. What she's keeping from him.   
  
  
His fingers are tight around her wrist, and she in turn tightens her grip on the mobile, locking its screen. "He let me know he had the girl," she corrects, "The rest was deduction."  
  
She takes a deliberate step back. "And Jim Moriarty didn't have _friends_. You know that."   
  
  
He.  
  
"Mycroft didn't see her, he'd have never left, of course," he says.   
  
He sets his jaw. "Is he expecting to ransom her? Surely he must know neither of us actually care."   
  
  
A sharp laugh of disbelief at the question. "If he did do you think he would have taken her? She's a liability. Something to slow him down," she answers. Which, as far as Irene's concerned, is a perfectly legitimate reason to keep the girl in Moran's company.   
  
"The girl isn't the _point_." She jerks her arm away, trying to break his grip, to change the subject. "The point was to run, wasn't it?"   
  
  
He nods, sharply. The girl isn't the point. She was, in all likelihood, dead. His attempts at sentiment were worthless, trying to do what John Watson would've done.  
  
Hardly matters.  
  
He nods towards the door.  
  
"Keep your head down," he says. "Unless he's grown attached to you, you'll be the target."   
  
  
She shoots him a look of pure irritation at the obvious, useless reminder of what she already knew. What she needed was _time_ , a moment to find Moran, to meet him face-to-face, to offer him order and command again in return for what was left of Moriarty's network, to hide what was most useful from Sherlock and his crusade.  
  
It was obvious, from the ill-advised text, that Moran was panicking, trying to instill fear without any thought on how to guide it. Sloppy, but an opportunity.   
  
She nods, heading for the door. "Best if you head to the wedding alone then," she answers lightly.   
  
  
"If he has the slightest idea of what----" _You mean to me_ nearly comes out of his mouth, but he manages to stop himself. That would've been completely embarrassing, not to mention sentimental and not accurate.  
  
"---our relationship is," he says. "You'll be dead the moment he can get you in his sights. Now's not the time to try to have tea with him."  
  
He didn't know quite what she was planning, but he knew _some_ things from the way she held her mobile, to the way the muscles in her neck changed when he would look at her. She was pulling away, preparing for something new, rather than relaxing into their "holiday" the way---  
  
No. No time to be sentimental and start thinking of things "the way they were". It is idiotic. He shakes his head as he reaches the door.  
  
"We need to get to an airport.   
  
  
That isn't what he'd been about to say. She's almost positive. There'd been a too-abrupt stop in his words, a deliberate switch of direction. Not that what words he _had_ chosen had been much clearer. "And what exactly _is_ 'our relationship' that he'd get such an idea?" she asks lightly.  
  
The levity sits false, even on her tongue. She _knows_ exactly what the answer is, knows how they've wormed their way under each other's skin.  
  
She reminds herself that holidays were temporary, that they cannot be this way forever. That he'll return to Baker Street, the flat above a little emptier, perhaps, and she'll misbehave. Perhaps a bit more spectacularly if she's successful.  
  
Still, she sighs with ill concealed frustration at his answer. "And waste all _this_ ," she gestures at him, at the flat they're standing in, 221B above. "Because one idiot wants to play a stupid game he can't possibly hope to win?"   
  
  
He doesn't want to leave. He wants to see John, he wants to leave him the key, wrapped up like so many other wedding gifts. He shakes his head. "I don't intend to play with him, Woman. If you want to, you're on your own."  
  
He imagines that wouldn't stop her. He doesn't want her to face this man alone.  
  
"The last time you played Russian roulette with someone you thought couldn't possibly win you ended up in Karachi," he replies, voice like ice.   
  
  
Her lips thin. She throws Karachi at him as proof of his sentiment, and he throws it back at her as proof of her failure. It is more than a city now, more than the place where Irene Adler died, more than a desert town and assault rifles and machetes. Karachi, no, not just Karachi, but Islamabad and all of Pakistan, has become their own personal shorthand for their weaknesses.  
  
"He ended up dead and here I am," she answers, sharp and unyielding. "But just because I'm here," she manages to swallow back 'with you' just in time, "don't think for a moment you can dictate who I play games with, Mr. Holmes."   
  
  
"Oh, I'm not," he replies, straightening himself so his height over her becomes part of his words. "I'm just dictating who your company will be when you're finished your games."  
  
He doesn't wait for a reply. He puts a hand to the door and steps out into the alley.  
  
He knows the way to the nearest airport, and he knows the safest routes to stay away from Mycroft's cameras. He starts in that direction without waiting for the Woman to follow. Part of him---a small part, mind---even hopes she doesn't bother following.  
  
Of course, the moment he crosses into the swath of sunlight in front of the building, he finds himself reconsidering. This place isn't safe. She can't---no, this is too exposed. He turns sharply and takes a step back, just as he hears the puff of air. A silenced rifle. He feels something sharp tear through his shoulder.   
  
  
He deliberately looms over her and Irene simply squares her shoulders in return, setting her jaw and staring back unwavering at him. He leaves, and she is of a mind not to follow, that this is _London_ and she would go confront Moran and be done with Sherlock Holmes and the entirety of this foolish, sentimental _holiday_.  
  
The message demanding a meeting is half-finished on her phone when Irene walks out of Baker Street and into the alley, with every intention of heading in the opposite direction, whatever it is. But a second after her heels hit the pavement, she hears the telltale ping of high velocity metal against concrete behind her. Instinct makes her flatten herself against the wall, presenting a smaller target, before she turns towards the sound to see Sherlock jerk from the impact, the bullet's entrance already apparent in the torn, ill-fitting suit coat.  
  
She moves without thinking to catch him, to at least guide his fall against the wall.  
  
"Sherlock?" There is genuine fear, genuine panic, in her voice in the single word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to Emerald City Comicon being this coming weekend, Chapter 16 of _Death Takes A Holiday: A Memory of Baker Street_ will be delayed. It should go up on March 31st or April 1st, rather than the 30th. 
> 
> But I'm sure nobody's desperate to know what happens. ;) 
> 
> Lyra


	16. Bullets and Cocaine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will bullets fired from above turn the flesh and blood ghosts of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler into the real thing in the middle of a London that does not realize they are in danger?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with the delay in posting! We'll be back to our regularly scheduled Sunday postings from now on. And just to make up for it, there'll be a _The Road to Islamabad_ chapter coming up tonight too!

His return expression to her is one that is completely startled. There isn't a doubt that the bullet that just hit him was meant for him and him alone. He drops prone instantly, just as another bullet hits the concrete right where his head had been.  
  
"Stay back!" he hisses. The pain in his shoulder is extreme, but it's hardly what the person with the gun was aiming for.  
  
Exit. Exit. He gestures to the sewer entrance.   
  
  
A tension she had not even realize had built up in the seconds between the gunshot and his answer rushes out at his response. His irritable presumptuous response, but a response nonetheless. And one that told her more that he was still alright than anything else.  
  
She ignores his words, edging towards him while keeping herself pressed against the wall. She splits her attention between him, falling/lying prone on the ground, and the rooftops above, looking for the gunman. "Shut up and hold _still_ ," she answers.   
  
She drops to her knees as she nears, asphalt biting into her knees, and reaches for his hand, to pull him up with her. Her other hand is still on the phone, tapping out a message she doesn't bother hiding. `I'm after you.`  
  
"You're mental. I can't drag you through there," she says, dismissive despite the clear concern in her voice.   
  
  
"There's nowhere else we _can_ go," he says. He takes her hand, and lets her help him. He hears the sound of a siren. Silenced or not, someone would start calling for help.  
  
"Woman, go," he says. "I'm right behind."   
  
  
Her grip is tight on his hand. She refuses to let her hand tremble, refuses to be anything but utterly steady. But she doesn't let go when he's on his feet again, as her eyes continue scanning the rooftops above. "You've just been _shot_ and you're telling me the sewers are our best option?" she demands.   
  
She can hear it in her voice, a ragged edge, the unsteadiness in her inflection, and she tries (with minimal success) to tamp it down. She glances at the door they'd just exited. "I assume your housekeeper has a first aid kit."   
  
  
She's afraid for him. She's not thinking rationally. He thinks back to himself, to the intense fear he felt for her in Las Vegas. Fear he did not want to acknowledge but sat there nonetheless. He was not thinking clearly when he took her to the hospital, and she is not thinking clearly when she thinks they need to stay.  
  
Every beat of his heart brings a new wave of pain across his shoulder.  
  
"We can't argue," he says, trying to keep his voice calm. "Whoever that is is repositioning himself and then he's going to shoot again. And Mycroft is going to be watching."   
  
  
She'd argue she's thinking perfectly rationally, that she's thinking of open, bleeding wounds and sewers and disease vectors. And there's a tension in the way he holds himself, in the ripple of muscle and his stance, that suggests considerable pain.   
  
Still, she admits that he's likely right that the sniper (one of Moriarty's? It couldn't be as foolish as Moran himself... could it?) is simply repositioning himself for a better angle. Which meant getting off that side of the alleyway was actually a good plan. She hated when he was right.  
  
"Then get under shelter and let Mycroft come. You'd expected he'd know you were alive, why change it now?" she says as she crosses the alley, not into the sewer entrance, but at least on the opposite wall, opposite and diagonal, right under the wall she'd expect the sniper would reposition himself. "I can disappear easier than you can. I'll meet you in Nassau."   
  
  
Mycroft would come in time, that was for certain. Sherlock would never be allowed to leave again. And if the Woman was there, then he'd take her away. And if Mycroft didn't come---  
  
It is odd. He feels some genuine fear for his own life, for the pain and the bleeding wound, but the idea that at least the Woman would live felt oddly _comforting_ , the way that his jump from the rooftop of St. Bart's didn't terrify him more because he knew it would save the lives of the people he cared about.  
  
He goes to the sewer entrance, straining to lower himself to the grating. He couldn't wait for Mycroft. He couldn't wait to be tied down here. He had to leave, but she had to get away faster.  
  
"Go," he says. "I'll meet you there."   
  
  
She relaxes when he agrees, her eyes still focused above, trying to find a tell-tale sign of motion, of light against metal or a scope. Nothing.  
  
She breathes an almost imperceptible sigh of relief at that, and risks looking down, to see him trying to lower himself to the grating. Two seconds to realize what he _still_ plans to do, and she swallows back twenty-three separate ways to call him an idiot.   
  
"You're being irrational," she says, following him. There was no point in pretending she wasn't concerned, no doubt it was _obvious_ , but she tries to keep her voice cool, firm, rational despite it, even as she reaches to pry up the grating. "Did you concuss yourself as well?"   
  
  
"I have to get away," he snaps. "Because Mycroft _won't_ be here in time. Doesn't matter what cameras say what. You know why?"   
  
  
The bleeding will have to be stopped, she thinks, for the moment glad the bullet seemed to have ripped clean through. She's thinking of what will need to be done because it keeps her from calling him twenty-seven types of idiot. And because it keeps her growing worry at bay, less obvious, even though it was clearly already. But it was important, to try.  
  
"Because you're stubborn and arrogant and can't admit that the rational thing to do is find help?"   
  
  
"No. Because Mycroft is where I _wanted_ to be right now. And no one will interrupt him there."   
  
  
She flinches, visibly, at that and mentally curses when she realizes it. "Then you should have taken the offer when I said to go to the wedding alone."   
  
  
Sherlock's nose twitches in extreme irritation. "Yes, Woman. This is entirely my fault, not wanting to put the shooter in John Watson's wedding plans."  
  
He lets out a short groan of pain as he lowers himself down into the cold, damp recesses of this sewer entrance. As before, leaving in a huff of irritation. Hopefully this time, without the damage of before. Hard to tell, in a place this dark.   
  
  
She follows, remembering at the last moment to take off the heels before she does. Dropping an unknown distance in high heels was begging for disaster, and she already had one to deal with.   
  
The fact that she was going to be, for all intents and purposes, barefoot in the damp darkness of the sewers, well that just didn't bear thinking about. She tries not to think too hard about what it's doing to the wound in his shoulder.  
  
Irene takes out her phone, ignoring the message that is there for the moment, and uses the light as an improvised flashlight. "Of course it is. Did you really think I would have suggested it if there wasn't a way of evading the shooter?"   
  
  
"Oh, so you knew he'd be out there, then?" Sherlock snaps. "I _greatly_ appreciate the warning."  
  
He lets out a grunt and leans against the damp wall. Its chill actually makes the burning pain in his shoulder feel better, though he knows that hygienically this is the worst thing he could do.  
  
He looks over to the bright blue light emanating from the Woman's phone. He swallows, turning his head to look at her.  
  
"Don't forget to close the grate."   
  
  
"As if you didn't," she snaps back. "He all but told _you_ he'd be there, didn't he?"  
  
She glares at him at the useless reminder and pulls the grate to with a louder than necessary slam. "If you're _trying_ to invite a deadly bacterial infection in that wound, just ask and I'd be happy to knock you into the first pool of standing water I see."   
  
  
He presses his hand against his shoulder. The wound feels tight, wet. He reaches his arm back and realizes that wet feeling doesn't extend back. The bullet is still in his shoulder.  
  
"I didn't think he'd be aiming for _me_ ," he snaps.  
  
He starts to walk forward, pulling out his own mobile for light in the wet darkness. It's hardly enough, and every step on his left foot shoots pain up his side. He knows every street in London, he reminds himself. He knows every sewer passageway.   
  
  
"I didn't expect he'd be aiming at all, so we're both wrong."  
  
She finds herself having to follow, to catch up, and it is another irritation. Irene Adler leads, she doesn't follow, but despite her words she is here, following, because she won't leave until she's certain he isn't going to collapse or do something else poorly thought out...  
  
But then they were in London. Anything at this point would be poorly thought out.

  
  
He stops, because he has to catch his breath. He tells himself this, and leans back against the wall. Getting anywhere is going to be difficult. More than difficult. Impossible, at this point.  
  
"You don't want to be friends with these people, Woman," he says. "They're not like Kate. They will recognize you if you cross them."   
  
  
She's counting his steps when he stops again, and her brow furrows. Too few to need any real rest or attempt to figure out where they are. Worse than she'd expected, then.  
  
Her lips thin, however, at his mention of Kate, and her voice is sharper than it had been, less simply irritated. "I'm not looking for _friends_ , Mr. Holmes."   
  
  
His lips upturn into a rueful smile, wide and pained. Practically a sneer, and far more open than his usual mocking or scolding might've been.  
  
"Of course," he says. "We don't have friends, you and I."   
  
  
She doesn't point out that if he hadn't had friends, he wouldn't be here, wouldn't be dead and trying to hunt down the rest of Jim Moriarty's network and getting shot. It was hardly worth pointing out.  
  
Instead she gestures to him, to his shoulder, with the phone and changes the subject. "How bad?"   
  
  
He lets out a sigh. "Bad enough. Though I don't think blood loss is going to be the problem."  
  
Instead, the festering bullet would be. But they'd deal with that later. There was getting away that would be the problem.  
  
"Are you armed?" he says, looking back. "It wouldn't take a genius to sort out where we went, and Jim wouldn't keep idiots so close."   
  
  
A curt shake of her head. She hadn't thought to carry in London, not in the city that had been home, the city that had been _hers_. She had been too preoccupied with the idea of not being noticed-- No, she'd been _distracted_. Lulled into thinking that perhaps this could be nothing more than an ill-conceived holiday.  
  
"He kept close people who followed orders," she corrects. "And that one in particular's terrified. He isn't thinking clearly." She pauses as they near a junction in the sewer tunnel. "And you're playing coy with 'bad enough'."   
  
  
"Left," he says. "And right now, Woman, _playing_ is the farthest thing from my mind."  
  
He needs a surgeon. Had John been here---  
  
Had John been here, he'd have been dead. The knowledge that John is alive is worth the wound. Worth a thousand wounds.  
  
"Not always," he says. "He kept you. And you have never been one to follow anything."   
  
  
"So is an accurate diagnosis."  
  
She frowns as she turns left, trying to triangulate where they are below London with the streets above. The fact that she cannot galls her. Still, she laughs, a sharp, skeptical sound, at his comment.   
  
"That wasn't being _kept_ , Mr. Holmes. More of a standoff."   
  
  
He lets out a sigh.  
  
"The bullet is still in my shoulder. I am in pain. There is nothing we can do about it right now."   
  
  
A pause, then she resumes her steps, brisk and efficient. That certainly explained his unexpected pauses. "Not the airport, the hotel then. I doubt he knows where to look to find it. Should be safe for a few hours."   
  
  
"Gossiping hotel staff aside," he says, "It would be safer for you to go to the airport."  
  
All the same, he doesn't want to be alone. The Woman has never been a very good assistant, but she does keep him---not _honest_ , not with the Woman, but she makes him feel like a whole person, someone who is more than just transport for his brain.  
  
"We can make it through the tunnels. To the hotel."   
  
  
Another curt nod. The tunnels were safest, though there was a distinct uncertainty as to the security of their exit, but she'd chosen the hotel in question for its utter unremarkability. No doubt Moran would be stalking the more high-end hotels in London.  
  
Still, she gives him a sidelong glance, tension and concern adding a brittle edge to her light words. "And leave you to Miss Hooper's tender mercies? I didn't think you enjoyed being coddled."   
  
  
"She's far better suited to her cats and her corpses," he says. He is a man trying to be a god, but at this moment the pain he is experiencing is overwhelming him. It's downright annoying. He stops again and leans against the wall.  
  
"Who was it? The person you've been communicating with? The one who shot me? Your not-friend?" he demands.   
  
  
He stops to rest, to lean against the wall, and the bubble of fear wells up again, anxiety prickling against her skin. She eyes him, recalling how he favoured one side over the other, a subtle, nearly imperceptible thing, and she approaches, slipping a steady, business-like arm around his waist.  
  
"Lean against me before you drop. I can't drag you out alone," she says briskly, all but hauling him with her. A pause, and an almost grudging answer.   
  
"Moran."   
  
  
"Sebastian Moran," he says, recalling when she'd told him about a 'Sebastian' he was to give his regards to. A former military man, now on the list Sherlock had of the web to destroy. He thought back to Hong Kong, back to when things started to change for her. Making new contacts, getting herself situated in a dangerous world. Oh, but it was so very _her_ , wasn't it?  
  
"You would pick the assassin, wouldn't you?" he says with a short laugh. He waves off her hand and shakes his head.  
  
A man trying to be a god. He can stand on his own. He will stand on his own. He straightens and, through sheer force of will, walks forward.   
  
  
She rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed, when he waves away the help she offers and begins to walk again. Her attention remains on him, watching carefully lest he flags again or stumble.  
  
"He was the one the Black Lotus was trying to contact. I took advantage." It wasn't that simple, of course, but she refuses to tell him that Moran was a frightened, rabid dog without a master. It'd be too obvious, make him realize what exactly she planned to do. Not make _friends_ , but slip her own collar over the spider's hound, to take what was left and shape it to her own means, for her own protection.   
  
  
"Yes," Sherlock agrees. "You are good at that."  
  
He looks ahead to the sewer and back. No sign of Moran following them. This is good, he tells himself. This is good, it gives them time to get to---to get to---  
  
"Hotel," he tells himself suddenly. Confusion, sign of shock. He knows this, he can list these signs, particularly in their relation to the recently deceased.  
  
He takes in a deep breath to counteract the short, shallow breaths he's been taking. It hurts. "Two blocks up, right, one block up, right. Immediate left. Up four blocks. Up ladder." In case he forgets.   
  
  
Her lips thin as she memorizes his directions. _Two blocks up, right. One block up, right. Left. Four blocks. Ladder_. She ignores his attempts to walk under his own power and ducks under his arm again.   
  
"Normally I'd consider stubbornness attractive, but now isn't exactly the time for pride, is it?" she asks. She's clearly annoyed, but there is a look in her eyes, a caution with which she touches him. No longer briskly business-like, but with care despite unwavering will.   
  
"Please."   
  
  
It's the _please_ that gets him. Neither of them are one to ask for anything, not really. _Please_ became a joke between him and John, as John had long since learned that that word meant very little to Sherlock except in cases of extreme emotion. But with the Woman---apart from their time in that hotel room, he could not really recall such a word being used between them.  
  
He nods and leans some of his weight on her.  
  
"Adrenaline's keeping me going," he says, calm as he can. "I'm going into shock."   
  
  
"I've noticed."  
  
A bit drily said, but her grip tightens on him, and she quickens her steps. "He knows, you realize. That if he kills any of them, there's no stopping you."   
  
  
"I've died for them, I expect he realizes that," he says. He just can't die _now_. He feels hot, and that's annoying because he knows it's not warm down here. He knows he shouldn't feel this way. Temperature raising, body in shock. She quickens her steps and he attempts to do the same.  
  
"So he targets me instead of them. The question is, revenge or proving a point?"   
  
  
She feels him struggling to keep up, and slows her pace to his, just a step faster, enough to hurry them through the sewers, not enough to tax him too much, to force more adrenaline through his veins. Irene eyes the tunnels, following his directions.   
  
"Are those the only two options?" she asks, her voice steady.   
  
  
He lets out a pained laugh. "Either it is about me, or it's about you," he says. "Which would you guess?"  
  
He coughs, and that sends pain shooting down his side. He finds that cough doesn't clear out his lungs as he'd prefer, so he turns from the Woman and coughs again, and again.  
  
Standing is difficult. Impossible. He lets his entire body go slack so he can sit down.   
  
  
Her grip on him tightens as he coughs. Once. Twice. Three times. Not helping then. She exhales sharply as his body goes slack, his weight momentarily fully against her before he sits. "I prefer not to _guess_ ," she answers carefully, her lips thin and tight with tension as she regards him. "We need to get out. Find a taxi. You're in no shape for anything."  
  
She's tempted to drag him to St. Bart's, at this point. Molly Hooper would at least have access to proper drugs, and medical supplies.   
  
  
"Too much of a risk," he says. His chest hurts. "Could be----injury to the lung, or internal bleeding. I'm not a doctor, Woman. Ask John."  
  
His body feels cold, and that comes on just as fast as the heat. Shock, definitely. Annoying, most certainly.  
  
"Safer here," he says quietly, letting his eyes slip closed. "It's only a few blocks away." A few blocks feels like miles. He needs something to keep moving, some sort of forced adrenaline.  
  
His eyes snap open. "Breast pocket."   
  
  
"Safer is hardly any good if you can't _move_."  
  
The fear that she had been keeping collared claws its way upward as he closes his eyes, and Irene's hand twitches. She is tempted to slap him to shock him back to his senses, but there is the chance that she'll do actual injury at a time like this, and his not-serious suggestion to call John Watson is almost tempting.  
  
Almost.  
  
But his eyes snap open and she reaches for the indicated pocket almost before he finishes speaking. She's kneeling, ignoring the fact that they are in the sewer tunnels, and her small slim hand thrusts into his suit jacket pocket with quick efficiency. She doesn't even have to pull it out to know what her fingers have closed on.  
  
"This is the worst idea you've had yet, you realize."   
  
  
"I'm in shock," he says. "Very near unconsciousness, so if you've got a better idea, you might want to say it right now while there's still time for it."  
  
He prefers to inject cocaine when he does get high. The mixture he's acquired, a 7% distillation, is fine enough to be snorted or swallowed if need be. He doubts the high would be the same, but that's not what it's for. Not right now.  
  
He has no time for shame. He lifts the hand of his uninjured arm and holds it out for the bag.


	17. Debts and Balances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shock threatening to incapacitate him, Sherlock Holmes decides the only thing that will keep him going in the sewers of London with a shoulder wound is cocaine. But does Irene Adler agree?

She doesn't stop him; she isn't John Watson, not the friend who cares about sobriety or staying clean. She's already thinking about consequences, about how to get the bullet out of his shoulder while he's still high, how to get out of the city without notice. She meets his eye and drops the bag into his outstretched hand.   
  
"I expect you'll remember not to run off for two days this time."   
  
  
He does smile, then. A small, but genuinely amused smile.  
  
"You might crumble under the weight of your concern," he says. He twists his thumb to open the bag, and puts a small amount on his forefinger, which he rubs against his gums. He makes a small face at the taste, but he can feel it start to work, the general buzz, duller than when cocaine is injected. He nods to the Woman.  
  
"Pound note," he requests.   
  
  
A twitch at the corner of her mouth, a nearly escaped smile. Still, he's at least focused on something and that makes it easier to swallow back the worry, the prickle of anxiety that has taken up firm residence under her skin.  
  
"One of us has to remain standing," she answers tartly as she hands him the note. "You realize we'll attract too much attention traveling if you're still obviously under the influence."  
  
And that's the closest she'll get to admitting actual concern for what he's doing.   
  
  
He takes the note, twists it in his fingers to make a straw, and lowers it into the bag, taking a solid hit from it. He evens it out on the other side.  
  
"I only intend to use it to get to the hotel," he says, already feeling it perking his brain, giving him that sensation of _up_. "After that, my only influence will be getting out of this city."  
  
He coughs again, this time it's wet, pained.   
  
  
A part of her notices how practiced his motions are, how controlled and measured the hit is. It isn't surprising, not after everything, but she keeps it in the back of her mind regardless. She counts to ten, fifteen, and is about to suggest moving again when he coughs, and this time it is a distinctly wet sound.  
  
"Tell me if you taste blood," she commands, offering him a hand to pull up. "Now let's _go_."   
  
  
"There will be very little you can do about it," he says, by way of a backwards sort of agreement. He takes her hand and lets her pull him up, letting out an uncomfortable grunt as he does so. The buzzy up feeling continues even as he releases his well held-onto pride and leans against her again.  
  
He considers Mycroft, again. Watching John Watson getting married, completely unaware that his brother is so close. What would he do if he knew? Would he be useful at all, or simply stunned and asking for forgiveness?   
  
  
His hand feels overwarm in hers, but it is as likely that the damp chill of their environs had cooled her skin more than anything has warmed his, and she dismisses the idea sharply. "It'll keep you from bleeding on my clothes," she retorts.  
  
The mobile provides a small amount of illumination through the tunnel, and she follows his earlier directions, careful to keep her steps steady with him leaning his weight against her.  
  
The unread message notification on the mobile tempts her, but she ignores it for the moment. It buzzes in her palm. A second message. She ignores that one too.   
  
  
He looks at her mobile, and then over at her. He can't decide if she's ignoring Moran out of some sort of fury at him, or if she's simply waiting for Sherlock to no longer be around. He feels a sudden, strange stab of paranoia hit the back of his mind. The Woman wouldn't have---no. No, she wouldn't have planned any of this. That's not her way. It's not that he trusts her, but she would never want him dead.   
  
"You'd never intended to let me fix what happened," he says, quietly. "Always your own Woman."   
  
  
She needs to know he's somewhere in the world as much as he needs to know she is. It's something that she expects will never change, no matter when he finds himself back in Baker Street and what far-flung corner of the world she finds herself dancing through.  
  
Irene doesn't answer, not immediately. This isn't the topic of conversation she'd choose, but she wants to keep him talking, keep him focused on _something_ and allow her to gauge just how the cocaine is/will affect him. "I owe you more than enough without adding to the debt, don't you think?"  
  
It isn't that simple, and she knows it.   
  
  
"And you think I owe you nothing," he replies with a slow nod.  
  
If he's honest with himself---which he never will be---he has to admit that he owes her for more than the physical things she's done, as in saving his life. He was thoroughly convinced of his inability to feel prior to meeting her. He could say to Moriarty that he was reliably informed he had no heart and he was perfectly comfortable with this. And then---and then...  
  
"Worried I'll demand you be on my side right when I need you to be, then," he says. He lets out a rueful laugh, which turns into a cough. He doubles over, nearly falling with the strength of this.   
  
  
Whatever she'd been about to say dies on her lips as he doubles over coughing, and Irene braces herself to keep him from falling and making the injury worse.   
  
She doesn't point out that she is already at his side, that Sydney had long stopped being an option, that despite his obstinate denials he needs her here, right now. Because it is obvious, and to point out the obvious is to be utterly ordinary and utterly unlike them.  
  
"That'd assume you'd ever admit to needing anyone on your side," she answers with brittle levity. Genuine concern slips into her voice as she continues, "You're making it worse."   
  
  
He takes in a few weak and shaky breaths once the coughing fit subsides.  
  
"Hard to breathe. Might be any---any number of things."  
  
He feels dizzy, and his weight goes heavily onto the Woman. He doesn't like having to be carried by her. He doesn't like it at all. But it's hard to breathe.  
  
"He's a good shot," Sherlock says. "Very good. If I hadn't turned back----well, John wouldn't have missed."   
  
  
She presses her lips together in a thin line as he offers up another symptom. Another half a block, she thinks, the way she's been judging distance. She sees an entry out up ahead, and her grip tightens around his waist.  
  
It's to keep him from falling over if he has another coughing fit, or so she tells herself, not because of what his words conjure up in her mind.  
  
"If you hadn't insisted on leaving then, it wouldn't have happened at all," she retorts. There should be anger in the words, should be but isn't, as she remains focused on the exit from the tunnels. "And most of those 'any number of things' require actual treatment, not aftercare."   
  
  
"Molly," he says. "We'll get me to the hotel, and you can call Molly. She'll come, she wouldn't say no. Except---"  
  
Except, like everyone else important to Sherlock, she will be watching John Watson get married. He swears under his breath. He takes in another breath and attempts to straighten. The buzz from the cocaine is keeping him awake, which is good. It's also distracting him from the pain, also good. It's simply made his mouth feel unbelievably dry.  
  
"The morgue will be empty," he says. "The other attendant never works on Saturdays."   
  
  
She mutters something under her breath, the tail end of which was utterly uncomplimentary. "If I agree to the morgue rather than a proper hospital, will you agree to a taxi?"  
  
An utter illusion of choice, that. If he said no, she was just going to wait for him to pass out and call a taxi to the hospital anyway.   
  
  
He looks at her incredulously. "Do you want to be caught? Noticed alive?"   
  
  
She gives him a flat look in return. "Are you really enjoying playing dead so much you're looking to the real experience?"   
  
  
"It's only a shoulder wound," he says. He feels his lung fail to expand and turns from her to cough again. "It---It should only be a shoulder wound."  
  
He's annoyed by the lack of gusto in his voice. It sounds like defeat. it sounds like he's given in, admitted that she's right, that he needs to take a taxi. And not having to walk does sound rather fantastic right now, even as his mind is buzzing spectacularly around him.  
  
"I'll need another coat," he says, sighing. "Something to hide the wound. The last thing we need is anything becoming _too_ obvious."   
  
  
"You're already staggering," she points out, hand on the heavy service access door that leads up and out of the tunnels. "We can throw the suit jacket over the wound." A twitch of her lip. "It's Kotor all over again."   
  
  
"You and I remember Kotor very differently," he says with a small smirk.   
  
  
"Can you move well enough to get out of the coat?" she asks, pausing at the door. Best to have the disguise on before they slip out of the tunnels. It'll also give her a better look at the wound, and she steps back, far enough to give him space to shed the coat, close enough to help if he loses his balance again.  
  
An answering, challenging smirk tugs at the corner of her lips, though it doesn't dispel the tension at the corner of her eyes. "Then maybe you should share exactly how you remember Kotor."   
  
  
"In how explicit a detail?" he replies, raising an eyebrow. He slips the coat off easily from his uninjured arm, but takes in a sharp breath as he slides it down his injured arm, keeping his shoulder as straight as possible. "Though I do seem to remember being stabbed at one point, though it turned out to be nothing more than a bad cut."  
  
This isn't like that and he knows it. He wonders what sort of bullets Moran has in that gun. Once they dig it out of him, Sherlock should run some tests on the material, get an idea about what they're looking at.   
  
  
She takes the coat and folds it such that the entry wound is clearly concealed, and takes a moment to run her fingertips over his wounded shoulder before draping the coat over it.   
  
"So was Las Vegas," she reminds him. She'd removed the stitches from the cut in her forearm days ago but the scar was still visible. "Or are you going to tell me you remember that differently as well?"   
  
  
"There's a great deal from Las Vegas that I remember that you don't," he says with a short snort. And a great deal of waiting on her end that he did not experience. He should feel more guilt for it and he knows that. He knows it, and it makes him feel uncomfortable. It is a lack of reaction that makes him wonder, sometimes, if there really is something truly wrong with him.  
  
"You should climb up the ladder first," he says. "If I fall, I don't want to bring you down with me."  
  
Again.   
  
  
"It'd be more suspicious if I climbed up and had to come back down because you fell," she points out. She eyes the ladder. "I'm starting to think you act the gentleman the more you're hurt."   
  
  
"Though both of us incapable of going anywhere would be more suspicious, but less _productive_ ," he replies. He gestures to the ladder with his good arm.  
  
"I'm never a gentleman, Woman. I'm simply more cautious." Though, in all honestly, not by an enormous amount.   
  
  
She hesitates for a second, and there is uncharacteristic indecision in the way she holds herself, in the line of her body. She wants to ensure he'll be coming up behind her, but there are no words for that sort of sentimental concern, not for _them_.   
  
"I did say 'act'," she points out, shaking off the thought and setting her hand on the ladder. "It'd be a shame to waste that second ticket to Nassau."   
  
  
He nods, a small smile playing at his lips that could be genuine amusement, or it could be the cocaine. In either case, the chemical signals in his brain are telling him that smiling is the correct thing right now.  
  
"I doubt Moran would appreciate the sun," he says. "Those stuck in a spider's web rarely like to leave where they've landed."  
  
This, in his mind, is the primary reason why the Woman can't become part of Moriarty's web. She can't stay still, doing so would just be _wrong_ for her. A home base, certainly. Somewhere familiar, he sympathizes entirely. But she's not Sherlock Holmes. She doesn't need the constant familiarity to feel comfortable, and she never should.   
  
  
"And they'd act irrationally when forced out," she points out, beginning to climb. "Do unpredictable things." She tries not to think that her messages might have provoked Moran specifically to this. She had meant to press, to drive fear into Moriarty's assassin and to herd him to where she needed him. Not to have him lash out and--  
  
She stops, when she's halfway up, to look back down for him.


	18. The Key Motivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> High on cocaine and suffering a bullet wound, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler continue making their way through a London that believes them to be dead. And yet, the question remains: how far can they trust each other, even now?

He looks at the ladder like the semi-impossible thing he imagines it is. He grips it with one hand, the other tucked against his chest. One foot, the other. He slips his hand up to the side for balance, attempting to walk up rather than properly climb. It's far from easy.  
  
"Is that the plan, then? Force them out? I think I'm doing a fair job of that on my own, Woman." Or would have, had things not turned... _sour_.   
  
  
She continues up until she's reached the top, and waits for a moment, listening to the sound of traffic, to whether or not pedestrians are passing by too close, before forcing the entrance open.  
  
"I thought your plan had been to pick them off, not force them out." There's a very important difference there, as far as she was concerned.   
  
  
"Yes, all right," he says, struggling up a few more rungs. "Though killing them isn't always the plan. It's simply...necessary. In those occasions."   
  
  
There are no voices on the other side, and Irene waits as long as she can to minimize the amount of time they are exposed and the amount of time he's climbing up before forcing open the entrance.  
  
London is almost painfully bright after even minutes in the tunnels. "Necessary? I'd have wagered you enjoyed yourself in Hong Kong."   
  
  
He pauses in his climb, keeping his eyes on the wet wall in front of him. He doesn't have to close his eyes to remember exactly how the Woman looked when he found her. The bruise on her face, the gauntness to her appearance. The cruelty of a photographic memory, he supposes.  
  
"I had my reasons," he mutters. He struggles with the next few rungs.   
  
  
A faint smile as she pulls herself out and awaits at the edge. It's obvious he's struggling, and Irene tries to ignore the part of her mind that is calculating what a wet cough and trouble breathing means for a shoulder wound, how the drug is interacting with blood loss and adrenaline.   
  
But for the moment, all she can do is wait, and flag down a taxi sharply. "You're not the only one."   
  
  
"Yes, but I imagine your motivations are less--- _visceral_."  
  
Not that he prefers himself this way. The contrary. He does not want to be someone who will leap before he looks, or who will speak before he thinks. Or, in the case of this evening, will walk out where an assassin might shoot him simply out of fury at a Woman.  
  
He struggles to pull himself out of the grate, letting out a short, sharp cry as his shoulder hits the side of the exit.   
  
  
She winces as his shoulder hits, and the cry more than anything hits home just how bad the wound was. After all, he is Sherlock Holmes, insufferable, calm, unflappable Sherlock. She has drawn emotion from him, yes, had made him cry out in passion and cracked the facade with anger, but this was different, and a part of her recognizes that her miscalculation with Moran had caused it.  
  
She couldn't give up, not now, but she couldn't play Moran as carelessly, as viciously, not with with him at her side.  
  
She reaches for his uninjured arm with an iron grip to steady him, not out of guilt or fear. "Not going to claim my motives are obvious?"   
  
  
"Any claim that your motivations are obvious, Woman, is a _lie_ , believe me."  
  
She grips his uninjured arm and he doesn't pull away. The part of him that does long for comfort, albeit a very small part, wants the touch to steady him as the pain wracks his body and his lungs threaten to collapse on him. He looks out to the road.  
  
"Now, where is this taxi?"   
  
  
A fleeting smile at his words.   
  
"You'll regret admitting that," she says. There's still tension and concern and guilt in her voice, far too much for the words to be either completely in jest or in seriousness. She gestures again, imperious, and the taxi driver, who had been hesitating at coming to the beck and call of a barefoot woman who had just pulled herself and a clearly not sober companion from the sewer grate, pulls up.   
  
She doesn't let go of his arm, her hand in fact finding its way into his. "You're demanding again. That's better."   
  
  
"You say that now," he says. "But I know when I start demanding tea..."  
  
There is a silly, fleeting moment where he actually considers asking the taxi to take him to John Watson's wedding. There's still time, truly. But it's far too late. It was far too late from long before he went into 221B and pulled the small prize from the space between his door and its frame.  
  
He needs to get that to John. He'll tell the Woman, he thinks. In case they don't---in case he doesn't---he'll tell her.   
  
  
The taxi driver gives them a skeptical look, but when Irene slips effortlessly back into the harsh American New Jersey accent and tells him to shut up and drive, he obeys.  
  
"And? You know how much I enjoy denying you."   
  
  
He smirks as he slides in, setting his jaw so he doesn't cry out as pressure goes onto the shoulder that hurts.  
  
"Yes," he says, going into his own American accent. "You do, don't you?"  
  
He tells the cabbie the hotel and glances at his watch. John would be getting married right now. At this exact moment, he was pledging his life to someone else, and completely letting go of Sherlock's memory. While it was understandable---of course it was---Sherlock couldn't help that he was so very _insulted_ by the whole thing. And perhaps part of him, a not insignificant part, wanted to be there simply to stand in protest of it all.   
  
  
She breathes easier once in the cab. Fear of discovery is the least of her concerns at the moment, and a part of her considers sending an anonymous photo to the elder Holmes. With his resources in London, the photo would be easily traced, easy to discover the hotel, and actual medical aid rendered.   
  
Irene's hand tightens unconsciously on Sherlock's as the cab weaves its way through London, and she works through the obvious (and not so obvious) implications of the action. His original plan with the girl would have exposed the deception behind his death to Mycroft Holmes, so the photo would do nothing their original plan wouldn't in that respect. The only difference was that he was in no shape to slip away from that knowledge.  
  
That and between his brother's resurrection and the descriptions he could get from the hotel's staff and Miss Hooper, it would be painfully obvious just who had sent the photograph.   
  
She could slip away. Be on a plane far away before she sends the photograph. But that would mean hiding again, being on the run. And it would be nigh impossible to force Moran into giving up Moriarty's contacts, his network, if the British Government were watching.   
  
A terrible plan, one that would not only irrevocably end their mutual holiday from death, but that would destroy her tentative plans. But it was an option, and she kept it in the very back of her mind.  
  
She smirks, instead, giving him a sidelong glance. "I know what you like."   
  
  
"Often," he agrees, though he leaves some room for error on her part. He coughs again, turning his head from her. This series of coughs leaves him light-headed. He can practically feel the cabbie's eyes on him.  
  
"Stupid English cold," Sherlock says with a derisive snort. "Couldn't we have gone on vacation somewhere warm, like Hawaii?"   
  
  
A smile tugs at her lips. "You weren't fond of the idea of Sydney."   
  
  
"Yeah, because it's all boring there," he says. He rephrases. Boring is something that he himself would think. "And dangerous or something."  
  
The cabbie looks back to the road, and Sherlock attempts to hold in another cough. His mind is buzzing, though his body is aching. They stop, and Sherlock realizes they're in front of the hotel.  
  
"Thank god," he says, letting out a grunt of annoyance. "I thought we'd never get here." He climbs out in what he imagines is typical American arrogance, but manages to brush his arm against the door. He holds in a cry and starts for the door to the hotel.   
  
  
She can see his jaw stiffen, swallowing back a sound, as he brushes against the door, and Irene climbs out the other side, handing the cabbie his fare and a too-generous tip. No doubt he'd think he'd taken advantage of some tourists and feel smugly superior all day.  
  
She catches up to him halfway to the rooms above the pub. "What symptoms can I dismiss as the cocaine and not the gunshot wound?" she asks in a low voice, the harsh American accent falling away. The heart rate she knows, but the seemingly new sensitivity she is uncertain of. Or perhaps the high is simply making him less inhibited.   
  
  
"Dry mouth," he says. "The jitteriness of the hands and I imagine some of the sensitivity. But the arm is overly tender, swollen. Might be from the bullet. Might be from internal bleeding in that area."  
  
He offers her a little smile. "The confusion is gone, for the moment. That's an improvement. Elevated mood."  
  
As elevated as a man who has just been shot can get, really.   
  
  
She glances at him, too tense to return his small smile, and fishes for the keys to the small hotel room. "The jitteriness will be a problem, and the increased sensitivity," she says. "There's still time to let a professional handle this, you realize."   
  
  
"You've been considering contacting my brother," he says as he steps to the door of their room. He shakes his head. "He'll know it was you."   
  
  
She shouldn't be surprised that he's realized it. She shouldn't, but she is anyway. Irene glances over the door frame for any obvious signs of entry to the small hotel room before unlocking and swinging the door free.  
  
"I've also considered simply waiting until you lose consciousness and calling for an ambulance. Your point?"   
  
  
"If I lose consciousness, call for Molly Hooper," he says, scribbling down the number on the notepad nearest the door. He lowers the coat from his shoulder, letting out a little sigh as some cool air from the room goes to the wet wound.  
  
"If the cough gets any worse, it could be a sign of the lung collapsing," he says. He turns to her, face cold and serious.  
  
"Can I trust you, Woman?"   
  
  
She pointedly does not look at the notepad on which he's scribbled the morgue assistant's number, and instead picks up the pen after he's finished and uses it to pin up her hair again. The question is unexpected, and she meets his look steadily. She doesn't know what he's thinking, she never knows for _certain_ , that was part of the thrill, and she doesn't answer for a long moment, letting silence stretch.  
  
"If you couldn't, you wouldn't have asked for change for the cigarette machine."   
  
  
He steps away from her and over to the bath, where he stands in front of the mirror as he undoes the buttons on his shirt. The bullet wound is low on the shoulder, and it's still dribbling dark blood down his pale chest. Swollen, the area around it is bruised.  
  
He turns the shirt over in his hand and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and the object he acquired from 221B. He holds it up for her inspection. It is a thick bronze key, with numbers for a bank engraved on them. A safety deposit box key.  
  
"If for some reason this becomes---if I go unconscious and Molly doesn't make it before I become her official patient," he says. "Give this to John Watson."  
  
He says that, and then tucks the key into his trouser pocket. He can trust her, but there is a point. There will, he imagines, always be a point.


	19. The Operation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between the bullet in Sherlock Holmes' shoulder and the cocaine in his veins, the consulting detective is nowhere near fit to be anywhere near John Watson's wedding. And her companion's deteriorating state leaves Irene Adler with a choice: either to attempt to remove the bullet, or to expose their continued state of living to one Mycroft Holmes, knowing the choice would ensure Sherlock's survival, but perhaps neither's freedom.

Her hand clenches at the request, and for a moment it is difficult for Irene to swallow, though her expression remains unchanged. Frozen.  
  
"Lie down before you fall over, Mr. Holmes," she finally says, turning away from him to open the wardrobe, and find the first aid kit she'd seen tucked away there. A heavier duty one than most places, no doubt the hotel saw its share of discreet (or not so discreet) bar brawls. She opens it, and notes it is well stocked, with plenty of rubbing alcohol, antiseptic wipes, bandages, and even a small disposable utility knife and tweezers.  
  
She heads for the bath to wash up. "The bank on the Strand."  
  
  
He stops at the small refrigerator and pulls out a little bottle of liquor, which he opens and pours into a glass. He takes a swallow of it. This is going to hurt.  
  
"Your camera phone simply wasn't what I kept in there," he says.  
  
  
A twitch of her lips, half-annoyed, at his tacit stubborn refusal. It's almost a relief that he's refusing, rather than meekly obeying. She ignores the idea that it is a side effect of the cocaine.  
  
She can see the wound better now, the vivid bruising, swelling, dark blood, and frowns. There had been no local anesthetic in the first aid kit, no topical. And given the way he flinched at even the lightest brush against the car, she can't imagine he'll stay still.  
  
"No, you kept that in your desk." She doesn't ask why, and instead sets the kit on the bedside table. "You won't be able to hold still when I start."  
  
  
"I wanted to keep it," he says. "It wouldn't have been right, elsewhere."  
  
He swallows the rest of the liquor. It burns the back of his throat and fills his body with a warm, numb feeling. Not numb enough to remove the pain of his shoulder, but he can only hope it will take _some_ of the pain away. He pours another small bottle into the glass and goes over to the bed. He nods to the chair, where his tie sits.  
  
"We can tie my upper body to the bed frame," he says. "Won't be perfect, but should be able to stop some of the involuntary movements."  
  
  
That earns him a laugh, a little short, a little unsteady, but a laugh all the same. "Good, you're learning," she answers. The answer had been obvious, of course, but it had been important to keep him talking, responsive, to gauge his reactions.  
  
She picks up the tie and the handcuff that had been left behind, and wraps the tie's fabric along the interior of the cuffs, to cover the pins within. "Give me your hands," she says. "And you can have the rest of the drink in a minute."  
  
  
He would normally protest, but he's feeling chemically uneasy. Blood loss, shock, cocaine, and now alcohol all running through him doesn't make for excellent transport for his brain. He puts down the drink and gives her his uninjured hand. The hand of his injured arm remains at his side.  
  
"I'm far from at my most dignified right now," he admits. His voice is blank, though for him he considers it sheepish, embarrassed. At least at this point this is not his fault. Not like back in Las Vegas.  
  
The motions are familiar, to handcuff a docile submissive to a bed or a chandelier, and Irene reminds herself that it _is_ familiar, that despite the fact that Sherlock Holmes is not and will never be a client, that this isn't play but impromptu surgery, that this part of it is at least familiar. She fastens one cuff to his uninjured wrist, fingers lingering against his skin. It doesn't work as well as she would like.  
  
A part of her is too busy cataloging his reactions, focused breaths and skin's temperature, over-warm compared to hers, to buy it. The rest of her is too aware of what comes next to pretend to acknowledge it.  
  
"I've seen you at worse," she answers as she passes the link of the cuffs between a loop in the headboard. She's thinking of the 747, of when the extent of the deception had been revealed and she'd brushed coldly past him, of the subsequent bargain with Mycroft Holmes. She expects he'll think she's referring to Las Vegas.  
  
A pause, and she removes his leather belt, doubling it and holding it to his lips. Her other hand reaches for the injured arm. "Bite down," she instructs.  
  
  
"Yes," he says. "You have."  
  
He opens his mouth obediently and bites down on the cold leather. Every muscle in his neck is tight, every muscle in his arm. This is going to be far from pleasant, and all he can hope is that he won't go unconscious from the pain. He doesn't want her to call Mycroft. He doesn't want to lose their chance to escape.  
  
He takes in a breath and watches the Woman with wide, observant eyes.  
  
  
Her hand on his arm doesn't tremble, but she does hesitate, draws a sharp breath, and her lips thin as she wrenches his arm up to meet the other and ties him down. She meets his eye, and reaches over him to the bed stand and picks up the tweezers and the bottle of isopropyl alcohol from the first aid kit.  
  
She looks grim as she dribbles alcohol over the tweezers, then pours a generous amount into the open wound.  
  
  
He thinks back to self-control exercises he used when he was younger to keep from crying out when bullies would bother him back in school. He pulls himself back, back into his Mind Palace, and focuses on not feeling. Not experiencing painful sensations. Therefore, when the Woman pulls back his arm to tie it, he doesn't cry out, even though he can acknowledge that it hurts. It is unbelievably tight and painful.  
  
The alcohol feels almost cool and relieving in comparison.  
  
He opens his eyes and stares at the Woman. He can quarter off the part of himself that hurts, he tells himself. He can. He can do this.  
  
He gives her a nod.  
  
  
She tells herself that inflicting pain is what she _does_ , what she is very very good at, but the lie never makes it past the knowledge that trying to dig a bullet out of a gunshot wound is nothing like wielding the whip in denial or the knife in precise pain. This is visceral in a way business is not, and her jaw clenches as she presses her fingers against the tender, swollen skin around the wound, applying steady pressure.  
  
She can see a gleam of dull metal beneath the slow ooze of dark blood, a spot of it washed clear by the pour of alcohol. She braces herself against him, to keep herself steady as much as to keep him still, and plucks at the revealed slug with the tweezers, holding her breath that she manages it on the first try.  
  
  
He doesn't cry out. He represses, pushes it all down. Secures his pain into different parts of his mind, into little compartments where no one can touch them, least of all him.  
  
Oddly enough, he finds himself thinking of being in Heathrow. Of watching the Woman pass by him without so much of a glance. _Not you, junior, you're done now._ He felt pain shoot through him, and all he could do was gape. He couldn't even hold it in. That sort of pain he wasn't expecting, he didn't know how to handle. This pain, this is something he knows.  
  
All he manages is a short whimper as the slug moves out of his shoulder.  
  
  
She refrains from gripping the tweezers tighter when they catch the slug and she feels it work its way out of his shoulder. Her own heartbeat is loud in her ears, but Irene's hands remain steady as she mentally dissociates what she's doing from the whimper he doesn't (can't?) hold in as the slug clears flesh.  
  
She catches it in one hand, to keep it from falling back into or near the wound, and reaches for the gauze and alcohol again.  
  
"You should say something, Mr. Holmes, before I suspect you've lapsed into unconsciousness," she says. She doesn't bother to turn to look at him, focused instead on using alcohol soaked gauze to wipe away what blood still seeps from the wound, and to press a gauze pad to the site.  
  
  
The alcohol burns. It burns and it hurts, and when he opens his mouth to speak, he finds himself letting out a pained sigh first. It hurts enough that he can't properly be annoyed at himself for showing the pain.  
  
"I believe," he says, his voice a little broken. "You promised me another drink of that brandy."  
  
  
She's satisfied that freeing the bullet didn't seem to have made the bleeding any worse, and winds gauze around his shoulder, securing it with the bandage and tape from the kit. She exhales at his words, the sound almost like a laugh, and reaches for the glass of brandy. Her hands are bloody, and she keeps them away from the edge of the glass as she raises it to his lips.  
  
"That's better."  
  
  
He swallows a mouthful of the brandy, and it burns going down. He coughs again and turns his head, his coughs thick and wet. It isn't easier to breathe. That is far from a good sign and he knows it.  
  
"Thank you," he says. "I---would have been incapable of doing that myself."  
  
Which is, perhaps, the closest he will come to admitting that she's just probably saved his life. He still intends to fully blame her for Moran's involvement, but that's far from important right now.  
  
"We need to change," he says. "And we need to leave."


	20. No Place Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still wounded, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler realize they can no longer linger in London, no matter how much the former would like.

She doesn't answer his thanks, instead setting the glass back on the table and reaching for his wrists to undo the handcuffs. Her expression remains carefully blank until she rises and turns away from him and heads for the washroom.   
  
"Speaking of things that are obvious, what was it you said about the cough?"   
  
  
He swallows as the cough subsides. It threatens to start up again. His injured arm drops limply, but his other arm reaches back for the glass.  
  
"Any number of things," he says. "None of them very good and _all_ of them irrelevant. Medical assistance would be better sought at our destination. A lot less dangerous there."   
  
  
A sharp exhale that is almost a laugh escapes her before she walks into the bathroom and closes the door firmly behind her. Only when she is certain she's alone does Irene lean heavily against the closed door, and allow her hands to shake as she draws in deep, slow breaths.   
  
Despite her own irritation at Sherlock Holmes being so very stubbornly uniquely unquestionably annoyingly himself, she finds it difficult to imagine a world in which he isn't somewhere in it, the balance of logical brilliance to her own extraordinary misbehavior. And for a moment on a rare sunlit afternoon in London, she saw what that world could be like without that balance.  
  
His fall from St. Bart's had not convinced her of the possibility, she tells herself, but a lucky turn and a sniper's rifle had. Irene allowed herself a moment, a count of sixty to indulge in the thought, to let its unpleasantness wash through her. Sentiment. Vulnerability. The thought of blood gushing between her fingers as she holds a hand to a gunshot wound that's found its mark.  
  
Far too dangerous. She'd have to play the game more carefully. Sixty seconds, and she stands again, walling away fear with ambition and considered her options again. To bring Moran to a place of her own choosing, that was clear. And she couldn't keep Sherlock in the dark this time, he'd have to know Moran was near or risk this again.  
  
She thinks, plans, as she mechanically scrubs the blood and alcohol from her hands, from beneath her nails, and opens the bathroom door again. "Nassau still, then?" she remarks.   
  
  
He closes his eyes, taking in deep but strained breaths as the Woman shuts the door to the bathroom. He hears the lock click, and he moves, holding in a whimper as he reaches for his coat, reaches for his mobile. He estimates he has a grand total of sixty seconds to send the texts he needs.  
  
He sends two texts. One, to a number he's had memorized from a list.  
  
South end docks. Bring the stash. Wear your coat.  
  
The other, to the number that texted him in Baker Street.  
  
South end docks. Think you'd like your bullet back.  
  
And, he imagines, there is another very small piece of the web snipped by the spider's mate. He tucks the mobile back in his pocket and lays back, letting out a short grunt as his shoulder hits the pillow. His lungs feel like water is running through them.   
  
  
She sees him lying there, breathing heavily, wetly, and Irene reaches for her own phone, half toying with the idea of sending a photograph anyway. She could run, he wouldn't be able to stop her, not in that state. Instead, she checks the messages she'd been ignoring.  
  
`Next time I won't miss.`  
  
`I'm not the one running scared now, am I?`  
  
Overconfidence. She dismisses it. She'll text back later, when she's had time to think, and adrenaline isn't souring her blood. "A day ago you expected him," she gestures outside, a wave of the hand indicating London, the British Government, etc. "to know you're alive. And now you refuse. Why?"   
  
  
Sherlock doesn't speak at first, choosing instead to swallow the last of the brandy in the glass. His stomach is warm and buzzy, and his shoulder stings and aches. If this is what dying is supposed to be like, it's rather a pathetic thing. Lung collapsing, shoulder hurting. Woman talking.  
  
She asks the question, and he finds himself turning to look at her. It's her, he can't say. It's her, because now there isn't time to make certain they can get out together. It's her, and she'll run off to Sydney or off to Moran or off to her death and he'll never see her again. It's her, and if Mycroft does catch her it would be far worse than anything she could do on her own.  
  
And that's when it ceased being the same.   
  
And he can't imagine a world without her. Apart, well, apart happens. There's the promise of another time, another place, even if that never does happen. Apart _now_ , well, that could mean death. It could mean worse.  
  
But he won't say that. Instead, he turns to look away from her, back to his drained glass.   
  
  
He remains pointedly silent, turning away from her to contemplate the glass, and she in turn ignores him, shedding the unremarkable wedding goer's guise and reaching for the arrogant Parisienne's. The dress is half-zipped when she stops, standing in front of the window, her back to him.   
  
She will miss London more, now, she realizes. That before, London had been part of a life discarded, part of a person now dead. But she is Irene Adler again, for the moment, and she expects from now on she will always be Irene Adler again, especially if her plans succeed, and she will miss London.  
  
"I didn't expect he would pull the trigger."  
  
And that is the closest she will come to apologizing.   
  
  
Oddly, it's enough.  
  
"I didn't expect Mycroft to release you," he says. His own apology. He adds with that: "He won't the next time. He'll think he's protecting you for my sake."  
  
He adds to that a short laugh, because the very notion is absurd. The Woman is capable on her own. More than capable. Sometimes, her own awareness of that is her undoing.   
  
  
And that is more than enough to explain what's changed between Hong Kong and London. She laughs, at that, and finishes zipping up the dress. She still doesn't turn towards him, instead contemplating what of the London skyline she can see.   
  
"And you'd know better than anyone that it'd be far more trouble than it's worth."   
  
  
"I'd have to rescue you from my brother's rescuing," he says. "Seems like I'd be playing your John Watson. Not a role I'd envy."  
  
He coughs and turns his head. He raises a hand up to the dressing. It feels hot.  
  
"I think I'm coming down from the cocaine," he says. "Must be metabolizing it faster than normal due to the injury."   
  
  
"It isn't a role you'd take to well," she agrees. She can only imagine. Neither of them are suited to fitting in, to being the voice of societal reason.   
  
At his mention of his current state, she turns away from the window, and gestures to the first aid kit still on the bedside table, where there are a few painkillers. Nothing strong enough but something nonetheless. "A sign to leave then, once you're dressed."   
  
  
He nods. "Yes."  
  
He gets to his feet and feels a sudden wave of dizziness. The combination of pain, blood loss, and alcohol, he imagines. He tells himself he can sleep it off on the plane. He moves to his old clothes and carefully tries to pull on his shirt. It fit him snugly before, and just pulling the cloth over his patched wound sends aches down his muscles. He won't ask the Woman for help. He's asked her for too much already.  
  
"From Nassau, we're taking another flight," he says. "Another two hours to the next destination." He buttons up the shirt with one hand, and moves for his coat.   
  
  
She almost offers to help. Almost. But pride keeps her from offering, just as pride keeps him from asking even as she sees that it is far from pleasant.   
  
Instead, she busies herself letting down her hair, tying it back in a tail at the nape of her neck, and picking up the Parisienne's hat. She arched an eyebrow at him. "Reneging on the hospital for treatment in Nassau already?"   
  
  
"There's a clinic where we're landing," he says. "It will suffice."  
  
He knows for a fact that there are no cameras in this clinic. No people who might remember him. Possibly not enough medical assistance, but---that's something they can deal with later.  
  
"Unless this cough worsens, I should be fine."   
  
  
"Something tells me your definition of 'worse' will keep changing," she says.   
  
Her gaze sweeps the small room, taking in whether anything here would give them away to someone with a discerning eye, and her eyes linger on the leather cuffs, a hint of dark blood still clinging to the fur. She reaches for it, picks it up and turns it over in her hand. A part of her wants to keep it, to not leave it behind. Sentiment, no doubt. The same sentiment that kept the ring from Montenegro firmly on her hand.   
  
  
He steps over to the sink and washes his face. Cleans up the dirt from his shoulders, runs water through his hair to straighten it. He can't make himself look like anything but an absolute mess right now. Hardly matters, he reminds himself. No one is supposed to be looking.  
  
"I'm ready," he says, turning back to her.   
  
  
The handcuff goes into her purse. She knows there's no reason for it, that she will no doubt lose or get rid of the purse before long, that they can't be burdened by _things_ , but for the moment, it comes with her. She supposes it is a small favour that he is too busy (fruitlessly, in her opinion) trying to put himself to rights to comment on it.  
  
She gives him a scrutinizing look when he turns back, and she shakes her head, a wry, almost tired smile tugging at her lips. He looks hardly ready, more an utter mess, but they are caught again, in each other's orbits, by their very uniqueness, and there is nothing for it.   
  
She forces herself to remain light, unconcerned. "Finally keeping your word to take me somewhere warm. I was starting to think you'd forgotten."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for staying with us to the end of this installment of _Death Takes A Holiday_! Normally, this is the part of the day when I say we will be back in two weeks. However, due to the sheer length of the next _DTaH_ installment and some real life things coming up, the next installment, tentatively titled _Death Takes A Holiday: Civilization Ends at the Waterline_ will likely not be posted until the first week of June.


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